Satellite Event at 16th ICCE in Oslo, Norway, June 18-22, 2017 / 6.08.2017

The satellite event was co-organized by projects MASSTWIN and ISO-FOOD- Its aim was to highlight the recent advances in instrumentation and its application in the environment, food and health related research, and by doing so, to explore the opportunities and challenges ahead.

The Conference was a good opportunity for the promotion of MASSTWIN project. It covered all aspects of environmental analytical chemistry and offered about 450 oral and poster presentations in 23 sessions. The session “Mass spectrometry in food and environmental research” was co-chaired by MASSTWIN researchers prof. Adrian Covaci (University of Antwerp) and prof. Ester Heath (JSI).

The Satellite event entitled “Isotopic techniques and their applications in environmental and food research” took place on June 18 (1.00 to 4.00 PM) and was co-convened by prof. Nives Ogrinc and dr. David Heath (JSI).

The use of isotopic techniques is in the midst of a remarkable period of innovation and discovery; the last decade has seen the emergence of ‘non traditional’ stable isotopes of metals and new capabilities for measurements of organic compounds. These advances hold the potential to reveal new insights into the nature, sources and transformation processes of pollutants in the environment and their mobility in ecosystems, food and human health. The stable isotope composition of trace elements has emerged as a large, multi-faceted discipline that is perhaps the fastest growing tool at the moment.

The event dealt with both traditional stable isotopes of light elements focusing on stable isotope composition of nitrogen and compound specific application of organic pollutants and non-traditional stable isotopes of trace elements such as Hg to determine the sources and transformation processes in the environment. It was intended to bring together leading researchers in this field and present the state-of-the-art including their own recent research.

Following presentations were given:

Kay Knöller, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Halle/Saale, Germany: "Nitrogen cycling and hydrology in catchments – Insights from stable isotope investigations"

Holger Hintelmann, Trent University, Peterborough, Canada: "The potential of measuring variations and fractionation of natural mercury isotope ratios in environmental studies"

Dolores Hernandes, Instituto Nacional de Investigacion y Tecnologia Agraria y Alimentaria, Madrid, Spain: "Screening of contaminants in bees and hive matrices by mass spectrometry based approaches"

 

Martin Elsner, Helmholtz Zentrum München, München, Germany: "Compound-specific Isotope Analysis (CSIA): Perspectives for Tracing (Bio)chemical Reactions in Complex Systems"

Nives Ogrinc, Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia: "Compound specific analysis in environmental and food studies"

Dimitra Lambropoulou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece: "Accurate determination of contaminants in environmental and food samples by chromatography coupled to isotope dilution mass spectrometry"

The event was concluded by a 1-hour round table discussion.