Application of Hyphenated Techniques in Speciation Analysis of Arsenic, Antimony, and Thallium

Due to the fact that metals and metalloids have a strong impact on the environment, the methods of their determination and speciation have received special attention in recent years. Arsenic, antimony, and thallium are important examples of such toxic elements. Their speciation is especially important in the environmental and biomedical fields because of their toxicity, bioavailability, and reactivity. Recently, speciation analytics has been playing a unique role in the studies of biogeochemical cycles of chemical compounds, determination of toxicity and ecotoxicity of selected elements, quality control of food products, control of medicines and pharmaceutical products, technological process control, research on the impact of technological installation on the environment, examination of occupational exposure, and clinical analysis. Conventional methods are usually labor intensive, time consuming, and susceptible to interferences. The hyphenated techniques, in which separation method is coupled with multidimensional detectors, have become useful alternatives. The main advantages of those techniques consist in extremely low detection and quantification limits, insignificant interference, influence as well as high precision and repeatability of the determinations. In view of their importance, the present work overviews and discusses different hyphenated techniques used for arsenic, antimony, and thallium species analysis, in different clinical, environmental and food matrices

Major Inorganic Ions in Bottled Waters from Several Polish and Romanian Mineral Waters

Mineral waters are important sources of micro- and macroelements for humans, thus its composition ought to be supported with good knowledge on their chemical composition and be controlled systematically. The aim of the study was to analyze the content of common inorganic cations in 9 Romanian and 9 Polish bottled waters, and compare the results of the analyses with the product label’s data. The novelty was the application of new analytical method (atomic emission spectrometry with microwave plasma) for this approach. A short chemometric evaluation of the obtained results was carried out, highlighting in many cases significant differences between the values declared by the producers and the obtained results; possible reasons of this situation are discussed

Invasive forms of canine endoparasites as a potential threat to public health – A review and own studies

Dogs serve as the vectors of serious zoonotic parasitic diseases. In the month of May 2012 – 2014, 339 dog faeces samples from seven public sites in Chełmno, a town in northern Poland, were collected and examined to determine the gastrointestinal parasite fauna of dogs. Each faecal sample was dissected with a needle, checked for tapeworm segments and examined for parasite eggs and oocysts using the flotation and decantation method and a modified Baermann technique. Differences were observed in the degree of parasite species occurrence. The most dominant were Toxocara canis and Ancylostomatidae. The detected species included: T. canis and Toxascaris leonina eggs (23.4% and 10.2%, respectively), as well as eggs from the Ancylostomatidae family (16.2%), Trichuris vulpis eggs (6.6%), Taenia type eggs (4.6%), Dipylidium caninum (5.2%) and Cystoisospora (Isospora) spp. oocysts (10.9%)