fronobulax
Bassist, GAD and the Hot Mess Mods
- Joined
- May 3, 2007
- Messages
- 25,076
- Reaction score
- 9,205
- Location
- Central Virginia, USA
- Guild Total
- 5
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Long, long ago I had a summer fellowship with the New York State Department of Health, Division of Laboratories and Research. PCBs were a concern and we were working on a quick and cheap(er) way to quantify how much PCB was present in human tissue. We used peanut oil as a substitute for human tissue. The process was to spike samples, run the measurement, compare the results and adjust the measurement technique to be faster or cheaper and repeat. There were a series of tests where the measured result was higher than expected. After eliminating technician error as a probable cause we finally tried unspiked peanut oil. Turns out the peanut oil was contaminated. We veered and established that the specific PCB present in the peanut oil was the result of animal metabolism and so 100% pure peanut oil (vegetable) as purchased in a grocery store contained some animal fat. We wrapped up our findings in a nice little package and presented it to the folks who investigated food contamination but the summer ended and I never heard what happened next.
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