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National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

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Your Environment. Your Health.

Final Progress Reports: University of California-San Diego: Field Portable Fluorescent Sensing Methods for Detecting Trace Superfund Pollutants

Superfund Research Program

Field Portable Fluorescent Sensing Methods for Detecting Trace Superfund Pollutants

Project Leader: William C. Trogler
Grant Number: P42ES010337
Funding Period: 2011-2017
View this project in the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools (RePORT)

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Final Progress Reports

Year:   2016 

Arsenic is a known toxicant, carcinogen, and recent evidence suggests that exposure to inorganic arsenic in the womb and early development can predispose one to cancer and infectious diseases later in life.1 Allowable arsenic levels in drinking water (10 parts per billion or ppb) and rice (100 ppb) are currently only accessible by expensive and complex analytical instrumentation. This research team has developed an enzyme-amplified method of analysis that allows detection down to several ppb using readily available laboratory equipment. It uses the ability of inorganic arsenate to catalytically short circuit the common enzyme GAPDH and produce a highly fluorescent compound.2 The method could potentially be engineered into a portable device. The work has recently been extended to determining arsenic in rice flour, where the challenge has been to develop new methods for extracting inorganic arsenic into a medium compatible with the enzyme analysis. This has the potential to be extended to arsenic analysis in other foodstocks.

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