Characterization of the leaching organic migrants from beads used in hydroponics

该项目的合作伙伴RHST Industries开发了一项名为“水珠”的新技术，名为“水珠”，旨在提高能源利用效率，降低环境足迹，以实现可持续的食品生产(土壤、农业和水培应用)。这种新型材料的成功与可持续性有关。从聚合物材料(例如，未反应的聚合物和增塑剂)中可能渗出的化学品是一个令人担忧的问题，因为它们可能对植物有害或在植物中积累。然而，到目前为止，还没有明确的标准来评估用于水培的材料的化学迁移。在没有这样的标准的情况下，RHST Industries决定与研究人员一起采取积极措施，评估其创新产品的化学浸出。这份Engage Grant申请旨在RHST Industries和申请者麦吉尔大学的巴扬博士之间建立合作关系。其目的是：(I)开发一种迁移测试，以模拟水培条件下的化学迁移，并使用高效液相-高分辨质谱仪鉴定淋溶有机迁移；(Ii)在不同受控条件下对目标化学物质的传质进行量化；以及(Iii)综述有关主要有机迁移对哺乳动物和植物的毒性的文献中的现有信息。巴扬博士的实验室配备了高分辨率质谱仪(高效液相-QTOF-MS/MS)，这是一项最先进的技术，可以识别这种“未知”的化学物质，并研究聚合物材料的稳定性。本申请书中描述的项目的成功完成将为申请者与RHST Industries在分析方法开发方面的进一步合作奠定基础，以支持S公司水培技术的商业开发。

The company partner in this Engage Grant, RHST Industries, has developed a novel technology described aspolymer beads under the trade name of Water Pearls aimed at increasing the efficient use of energy andlowering the environmental footprints in order to obtain sustainable food production (soil agricultural andhydroponic applications). The success of the novel material is related to sustainability. The possible leaching ofchemicals from polymer materials (e.g. unreacted polymer and plasticizers) is a concern, as they could beharmful to the plants or accumulate in it. To date though, no standards have been clearly defined to assesschemical migration for materials used for hydroponics. In the absence of such a standard, RHST Industriesdecided to take a proactive step with researchers to assess chemical leaching from its innovative product. ThisEngage Grant application seeks to establish a collaboration between RHST Industries and the applicant, DrBayen at McGill University. The objectives are: (i) the development of a migration test to simulate chemicalmigration under hydroponics conditions and identify the leaching organic migrants using HPLC-HRMS, (ii) thequantification of the mass transfer for target chemicals under different controlled conditions, and (iii) thereview the available information in the literature on the toxicity of the major organic migrants on mammals andplants. Dr Bayen's laboratory is equipped with high resolution mass spectrometry (HPLC-QTOF-MS/MS), thestate-of-the-art technology for the identification of such "unknown" chemicals and the investigation of thestability of polymer material. Successful completion of the project described in this application will lay thefoundation for further collaboration between the applicant and RHST Industries on analytical methodologydevelopment in support of commercial exploitation of the company s technology for hydroponics.