The Standard – April 2017
Welcome to the April 2017 edition of “The Standard,” our newsletter for issues related to environmental, food, water, and human exposure testing. In this issue we introduce new pyrethroid standards and provide an update to chlorpyrifos.
Standards for Environmental, Food, Water, and Exposure Analysis
CIL recognizes that many organic contaminants are not only environmental pollutants, but may also be food and water contaminants, and ultimately compounds of concern in human exposure studies. As our product lines continue to grow, we find our standards being used not only as “environmental” contaminant standards but increasingly in these interrelated applications and sample matrices. Whether you are testing PCBs in sediment, pesticides or dioxins in food and feed, PPCPs in industrial effluent, flame retardants in house dust, or PAHs and tobacco metabolites in biomonitoring studies, CIL has an extensive set of standards to meet your analytical needs.
New Pyrethroids Available at CIL
The 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” had a large impact on the way ordinary citizens viewed a widespread class of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) known as organochlorine (OC) pesticides, and encouraged environmental and public health professionals to scrutinize POPs much more than before.
CIL and Italy... A Relationship that Began 40 Years Ago
On July 10, 1976, an explosion at the ICMESA chemical plant released a thick, white cloud that quickly settled on the town of Seveso in northern Italy. In the cloud was 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD or dioxin), a highly toxic material. First, animals began to die. Four days later, people began to feel ill effects – nausea, blurred vision, and, especially among children, the disfiguring sores of chloracne. It wasn’t until weeks later that the town itself was evacuated. Thousands of animals in the contaminated area died, and many thousands more were slaughtered to prevent TCDD from entering the food chain.1
Chlorpyrifos Under Review
Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphate insecticide, acaricide, and miticide used to control foliage growth and soil-borne insects. The use of chlorpyrifos as a pesticide began in 1965. It has been predominately used on corn crops, but it has also been used on numerous row crops and fruit and nut trees. Studies show chlorpyrifos is relatively hydrophobic and binds strongly to soil particles. The major metabolite, 3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridinol (TCPy), is moderately persistent and mobile in soil as a result of weak binding to soil particles.