Exploring the chemistry of complex samples by tentative identification and semiquantification: A food contact material case

Abstract

In this month's Featured Article Eelco Pieke and his colleagues from the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark, discuss some timely issues in the objective and practical assessment of food and environmental safety. As the authors rightly suggest, in our increasingly unpredictable world, even with powerful analytical tools at our disposal, the realistic assessment of risk is a challenge. In any given scenario, an almost limitless array of unknown substances can ‘contaminate’ our environment, and depending on structure, properties and amount, any one of these could pose a significant threat. The task of defining the risk in a cost‐ and time‐efficient manner is much more than an exercise in analytical chemistry given the volume of data, scope of the problem and the uncertainties involved. In this article Pieke, Smedsgaard and Granby discuss their approach to defining and prioritizing risk. They use mass spectrometry as their central analytical platform for both structural elucidation and to estimate analyte concentration and they illustrate their approach through a practical, real‐world example involving food contact materials.