Aivars Bērziņš, Dr. med. vet., PhD, Director of the Institute of Food Safety, Animal Health and Environment “BIOR”, Professor at the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Vice-chair of the Management Board of European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), Full Member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences
In: Latvian Academy of Sciences Yearbook 2021, 2021, pp. 21-25.
“In 2020, the researchers of the Institute continued their scientific activities related to the application of high-resolution mass spectrometry for the analysis of chemical contaminants in food products. For example, the analytical methodology based on Fourier transformation ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry was used to achieve the quantification of residues of pharmaceuticals in food products and environmental objects without time-consuming sample preparation procedures. Another study significantly extended the number of analysed mycotoxins by the implementation of two-dimensional liquid chromatography. Those newly proposed methodologies proved their reliability and accuracy within several occurrence studies of contaminants in a broad range of food samples. In addition, the proposed sensitive determination procedures facilitated the research in the area of food technological processes aimed at diminishing the content of harmful chemical compounds. L’ORÉAL Baltic “For Women in Science”’ programme, in cooperation with the National Academies of the Baltic States and UNESCO National Commissions, has awarded Dr. Iveta Pugajeva for her scientific work “Elaboration of New Methodology Using Ultra High-resolution Mass Spectrometry for Assessing Public Health via Wastewater-Based Epidemiology”. Over the last years, wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is used at the Institute as a novel approach of sampling and analysing chemical substances in wastewater samples to estimate a population’s exposure to chemicals. This methodology was proposed for the first time as a potential tool to assess the use of illicit drugs and misused therapeutic drugs within a community. Nowadays the application area of WBE has extended to pharmaceuticals and personal care products, population markers, industrial chemical exposure markers, stress, food and diet markers, and biological markers. Despite the latest development, a number of open scientific issues remain, such as insufficient sensitivity of analytical methods, a lack of data on the occurrence of several biomarkers, and the suitability of proposed biomarkers as a characterisation tool in WBE, which need to be solved in order to successfully apply WBE in new areas.”
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