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The Tar Balls Keep Rolling In
As you read this, tar balls from the
Gulf of Mexico continue to wash
up on the shores of the U.S. And
while organizations like Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institute (WHOI)
have found that naturally occur-
ring microbes are eating oil at a
much faster pace than predicted,
scientists still believe that this may
only account for 10% of the total
discharge. Samantha Joye, a marine scientist at the University of
Georgia, recently took 250 core samples of the sea floor cover-
ing an area of 2,600 miles and found that many contained the oil
fingerprint (MC252) from the Deepwater Horizon rig. The oil spill
may be out of the headlines, but the need for reliable analysis is
far from over. We have 17 blog entries and counting on the Gulf oil
spill, and many more on petrochemical analysis in general. Stop by
ChromaBLOGraphy today for the latest advice and tips!
Restek now offers a full line of secondary columns with a wide
range of polarities to help you accurately analyze highly complex
samples using GCxGC. These new columns can be matched with
any Restek Rxi® or Rtx® primary column to create the perfect
orthogonal separation for your application—and our online
column combination guide makes pairing simple. A 2 m length
means greater convenience and reduced cost while 0.15, 0.18,
and 0.25 mm ID formats accommodate varying sample capacities,
speeds, and detectors. And, of course, because they’re Restek col-
umns, you know you’re getting the high thermal stability and unri-
valed inertness you’ve come to rely on. Our chemists have been
performing comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography
since its commercial inception, and now you can put our years of
GCxGC experience to work in your lab, too.
Turn to page 8 to see our secondary
columns for GCxGC put to the test!
Have You Tried Our
Reversible Inlet Seals?
Flip Seal™ inlet seals feature a patented
design that lets you simply flip them and
use them again instead of throwing them
away, so you get twice the life for
the same price. Soft Vespel®
rings embedded in the
top and bottom surfaces
eliminate the need for a
washer and require very little
torque to make a reliable seal.
Choose gold plating or Siltek® treatment to reduce breakdown
and adsorption of active compounds for maximum transfer onto
the GC column. For decreased costs and increased performance,
you owe it to your data to try our reversible Flip Seal™ inlet seals
today.
1,4-Dioxane in
Your Bathwater
Next time you take a bath, you
might just be enjoying a nice, long
soak in 1,4-dioxane. Dioxane is a
by-product of the ethoxylation
process, which is employed most
notably to create sodium myreth
sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate
for the manufacture of soaps and cosmetics. Unfortunately, dioxane
has also been classified as a Group 2B carcinogen, prompting compa-
nies to begin eliminating it from their products. Over 1 million people
in the U.S. are exposed to low-ppb dioxane levels in their drinking
water, and half of those exposures are above the health guide-
lines set by the EPA (3 ppb). The recently signed third Unregulated
Contaminant Monitoring Regulation (UCMR 3) will require monitor-
ing using newly promulgated methods. 1,4-dioxane will be analyzed
according to EPA Method 522, which concentrates the sample using
solid phase extraction (SPE) instead of the most common technique
previously used for this compound: purge and trap. Thankfully, we
have reference standards specifically formulated for Method 522, and
you can find them at
Restek Introduces Secondary
Columns for GCxGC
Tar ball photo courtesy of Susan Forsyth
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