Monday, October 16, 2006 Roma Lodge 7130 Spring Street (Highway C) Racine, WI 53406 (262) 886-3610

DIRECTIONS

The potential consequences of the environmental situation in the former Soviet Union for the health of mothers and infants, and especially for break milk contamination, have been of particular concern to health authorities in Kazakhstan. A study that analyzed breast milk for organics, toxic metals, and radionuclides was undertaken to provide a scientific basis for the development of a national infant feeding policy.
Breast milk samples for metals and radionuclides were collected in eight sites in central and northern Kazakhstan in April 1995, following rigorous collection protocols. We were asked to develop a novel measuring approach to survey the total metal content in milk and to quantify major minerals and electrolytes, essential trace elements, and toxic elements in milk, food, soil, and water samples. Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) and mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) techniques were developed, and results obtained were compared with instrumental neutron activation analysis. This talk will discuss the study approach, techniques developed, results obtained, and consequences to the Kazakhstani infant feeding policy. Recent analytical studies have improved ICP-MS methods for the determination of iodine and metals in milk. A new rapid, direct procedure also will be described.

Ramon Barnes is director of the University Research Institute for Analytical Chemistry, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts, editor of the ICP Information Newsletter (1975-), and chairman of the Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry (1980-). He received a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana, in 1966, an A.M. in chemistry from Columbia University, New York, in 1963, and was a post doctoral research fellow at Iowa State University, Ames, in 1968 and 1969. He served as an Army Captain at NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, from 1966 to 1968. From 1969 to 2000 he taught analytical chemistry and maintained an international research program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has published more than 300 papers, edited four books, and continues an active research interest in fundamentals and applications of inductively coupled plasma (ICP) discharges for spectrochemical analysis. The University Research Institute for Analytical Chemistry (URIAC) is the research and development division of ICP Information Newsletter, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation established in 1997 to foster science education, research, and study in spectroanalytical chemistry. URIAC provides specialty plasma spectrochemical analysis, method development, training, consulting, and applied research with ICP atomic emission spectrometry and ICP mass spectrometry for ultratrace metal and stable isotope analysis, method development, training, consulting, and applied research with ICP atomic emission spectrometry and ICP mass spectrometry for ultratrace metal and stable isotope analyese in enviorbnmental forensics, drug development, medicine, public health, and semiconductor manufacturing.