What does Markes International do? [PDF]

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source (look at our blog post about the public perception of 'chemicals'). But we do need .... regulations on chemicals at work – aided by technologies like ours.
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Title goes here Examples of companies supplied by Markes What does Markes International do? We provide chemists with the tools to find chemicals in all sorts of things – from pesticides in river water to aroma compounds in strawberries. In this e-book, we’ll help you understand why detecting chemicals is important for our safety and health. To do this, we’ll talk about some of the most interesting areas in a bit more depth, and highlight the most exciting examples of our work.

We’d better point out that although we supply all the companies listed on this page, we’re not indicating that they’ve provided an actual endorsement or recommendation. We like to think they might though!

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Chemicals – good and bad C

hemicals are nasty, aren’t they? Hormone-disrupting additives in plastic toys. Chemical coatings on tins of food. Pesticides in your drinking water. The list goes on, and you don’t have to look far to find someone voicing concern about the man-made chemicals that we’re spreading around the planet.

Man-made vs. natural? But man-made chemicals have their uses – just think of the many materials essential for modern life, such as plastics and glass. And what about the chemicals that cause the aroma of, say, a chicken jalfrezi? These are hardly ‘naturally occurring’, but that doesn’t mean we should ban them. Along the same lines, just because a chemical occurs in Nature doesn’t mean it’s harmless. Mouldy foods, for example, are perfectly natural but produce an array of pretty nasty chemicals.

The need for hard facts OK, so perhaps we shouldn’t be too quick to judge a chemical by its source (look at our blog post about the public perception of ‘chemicals’). But we do need facts, and this is where analytical scientists like us come in.

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The role of the analytical scientist What chemicals are in your sample? Let’s suppose you’ve studied your chemical in the lab and know how it produces its effect – perhaps a nice smell, or toxicity to fish, or an allergic reaction on the skin. Now you need to know how much is in your test sample, whether that’s a strawberry, a pot of paint, or a plastic toy. This is where analytical chemistry comes in – using scientific methods to find out what chemicals are in a sample, and how much there is of each one.

The problem is there’s not usually very much. How do you confidently identify a chemical that might be present at only one part in a billion – equivalent to half a thimbleful in an Olympic-sized swimming pool?

Analytical laboratory equipment Specialist analytical equipment is what you need, and as a UK-based manufacturer of scientific instruments established in 1997, we’ve had nearly 20 years to get really good at this. On the following pages, we’ll be highlighting some of the most interesting areas we’ve been involved in, to give you an idea of the important role that analytical science plays in the world today.

What do we do?

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below to find out more about five ways in which our equipment helps scientists to make our world safer and healthier.

▪▪ Environmental monitoring – Helping to tighten controls on chemicals in the environment. ▪▪ Food analysis – Making food more enjoyable and safer to eat through better quality control. ▪▪ Testing for chemicals in materials – Reducing exposure to chemicals in our day-to-day lives. ▪▪ Forensic investigations – Providing solid evidence for the courts. ▪▪ Biological monitoring – Making our lives healthier by detecting volatile chemicals in the body.

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Environmental monitoring

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Environmental monitoring Helping to tighten controls on chemicals in the environment

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ankind has a big impact on the environment – from factories belching out black smoke to the pollution of rivers with the detergents in shampoo.

Toxic or harmless? Some of the chemicals involved are definitely toxic, some are probably harmless – but there are lots more we simply don’t know much about. The good news, though, is there are plenty of people who are concerned by our impact on the environment, and who are striving to understand these chemicals. Governments, of course, have a big role in this, by passing laws to control chemical releases. These laws must be founded on hard facts – and this is where analytical scientists come in.

The following pages highlight two ways in which we help those scientists detect chemicals in the environment.

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Air pollution Providing equipment for monitoring pollutants in urban air

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mounts of man-made chemicals in the air are highest in cities. But they vary a lot – especially depending on the weather and the amount of traffic. The air in cities is therefore continually checked to ensure that chemicals don’t exceed dangerous levels. At Markes, for many years we’ve contributed to this effort by supplying equipment for monitoring programmes.

Our instruments in action ▪▪ Our equipment has for a number of years been used to monitor pollutants in New York State, USA – download this report on their activities to find out more. ▪▪ We’ve recently been getting ready for the fieldtrial stage of the massive PAMS air-monitoring program in the USA – see our blog for more. ▪▪ See this article in LCGC: The Column to learn how our instruments can be used to continuously monitor traffic pollutants in air. ▪▪ Monitoring air around oil refineries is attracting a lot of attention in the USA. Read this article in Petro Industry News to learn more about how our equipment can be used to do this.

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Chemicals at work Improving standards of occupational health

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orkers are in the front line when it comes to chemical exposure – whether it’s solvents used for cleaning, bulk materials used in manufacturing, or pesticides in agriculture. There used to be a lot of concern over workplace exposure in the UK and USA. Now, the situation is much improved, thanks to tight regulations on chemicals at work – aided by technologies like ours. But vigilance is still needed, because maximum acceptable exposure levels continue to fall. Also, in some countries chemical regulation is poor or non-existent, endangering worker health. So monitoring hazardous chemicals in workplaces – and so helping to minimise exposure – remains an important application of our instruments.

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Our instruments in action ▪▪ In conjunction with the Health & Safety Laboratory, we’ve manufactured a device a bit like a breathalyser that collects hazardous chemicals in your breath. For more about this project, see the HSL website and our own product pages. ▪▪ See this paper in the journal Indoor Air for a study using our equipment to analyse hazardous compounds in a variety of working environments.

Landfill sites Minimising the effect of rubbish tips on the environment

Our instruments in action

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▪▪ Visit the Odournet webpage for a video that shows our equipment being used by odour consultants for testing of environmental samples.

But rubbish stinks – which is a big issue for owners of landfill sites and waste processing facilities, who have to monitor their sites regularly for unpleasant chemicals.

▪▪ This article in LCGC: Current Trends in Mass Spectrometry looks at how our equipment can detect a range of hazardous chemicals in river water.

n the bin – out of sight, out of mind? We don’t often give much thought to where our rubbish ends up once it’s been taken away by the refuse collector.

Some chemicals are released into the air, while others leach into rivers and lakes. Wherever they are, our equipment can help make sure that pollutants don’t pose a risk to ecosystems or human health.

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Climate research Monitoring chemicals in the atmosphere

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umans are by far the main source of volatile chemicals in the atmosphere, right?

Wrong. Emissions from ‘natural’ sources such as plants and the oceans are actually 10 times larger than all the man-made emissions put together. Understanding what these chemicals do is the focus of a lot of research. This is because these chemicals react with each other and with gases like oxygen. The result? Complex effects on ozone generation, cloud formation, and movement of heat in the atmosphere – all of which we need to understand to create accurate models of the atmosphere to aid climate modelling. We contribute to this vital field of study by providing equipment that can detect the very low concentrations of these chemicals in the air.

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Our instruments in action ▪▪ Professor Alastair Lewis at the University of York uses our equipment to monitor chemicals in the atmosphere. Find out more on his website and the project site.

Food analysis

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Food analysis Making food more enjoyable and safer to eat through better quality control

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ood, like every other object around us, is made of chemicals. Unlike everything else, though, we eat it.

So food has always been a focus of interest for the analyst because the chemicals it contains have a direct route to our bodies. They therefore have a correspondingly large potential to do us good, or harm.

A plethora of chemicals The trouble with food, though, is it contains many different types of molecules, which is a big challenge even for modern instruments.

We’ve been helping food scientists get around this problem by developing ways of dealing with these complex samples, and so get reliable results more quickly. The following two pages focus on how we’ve been doing that.

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Title goes Aroma profiling here Improving the taste of food and drink

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hat makes food taste good? It might be surprising to learn that it’s not just about the five basic sensations (sweet, sour, salt, bitter and umami) that your tongue detects. Instead, every time you chew, volatile chemicals from food get drawn through the back of your mouth into your nasal passages. Here, clever receptors distinguish between the many hundreds of different types. Even tiny quantities of a particular chemical can cause differences in overall aroma, so knowing about these food volatiles is really important to people in the food industry. At Markes, we provide equipment to a number of food producers, who want to improve the consistency of their products – and understand what makes them popular!

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Our instruments in action ▪▪ Read this article in American Laboratory to learn how our equipment can help increase the number of chemicals that can be detected from a single sample of beer. ▪▪ See this article in LCGC: The Column (page 9) for a summary of how our equipment can help find the really small amounts of aroma compounds in strawberries.

Food safety Helping ensure that food is safe to eat

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hemicals, as well as being important for the consumer’s ‘experience’ of food, can also be useful as a marker of quality. The obvious example of this is food getting contaminated with chemicals used in agriculture, or leaching into it from packaging.

Our instruments in action ▪▪ Watch this YouTube video to see Dr Carsten Müller at Cardiff University explain how he uses our equipment to investigate volatiles released from packaged food.

However, also of interest are the volatiles released from food as it ages. Research has shown that these could be useful to indicate quickly whether the food is fit for consumption. Our equipment is used by scientists to detect the chemicals in food and drink, and so help work out how they might be used to sound the alarm if a batch of food has gone past its use-by date. ▪▪ Read this article in LCGC: The Column to learn how our equipment can be used to detect fungicide residues in wine. ▪▪ See this blog post for a quick look at how we’ve been helping researchers reduce pesticide use in tea plantations.

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Testing for chemicals in materials

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Testing for chemicals in materials Reducing exposure to chemicals in our day-to-day lives

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lasticisers. Dyes. Resins. Glues. Optical brighteners. Thickeners. Everyday products contain lots of chemicals – and sooner or later they get inside you. Worse still, some of these chemicals can build up over the course of a lifetime, resulting in effects that are difficult to predict.

The rise of chemical legislation As a result of concern over these chemicals, there are now an increasing number of rules setting out acceptable levels in everything from car dashboards to children’s toys. Analytical chemists have two roles in this. First, they carry out the original research into the levels of chemicals in products. Second, they help manufacturers carry out routine screening of products, so ensuring that regulations are adhered to.

At Markes, we help those chemists by supplying equipment and expertise in detecting chemicals, in a wide variety of materials – as illustrated by the following examples. [email protected] www.markes.com

‘New car smell’ Helping to improve air quality inside vehicles

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amiliar with the ‘new car smell’? It might be pleasant or even desirable... but the chemicals that cause it aren’t. The quality of air inside cars was actually one of the first to come under the spotlight, and there’s been lots of attention devoted to this topic down the years. Our equipment’s been used to help organisations understand the chemicals released from car trim, and how the amounts vary – for example, with temperature. This research is vital to help us understand our exposure to chemicals in cars, which is important simply because we spend so much time inside them.

Our instruments in action ▪▪ Research scientists – in conjunction with Jaguar Land Rover – have used our instruments to look at emissions from car trim. Learn more on the University of Warwick website. ▪▪ See this article on the BMW website to learn how our analytical equipment and the human nose can be used side-by-side to understand ‘new car smell’.

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DIY products Reducing emissions from materials used to decorate our homes

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xposure to chemicals indoors is a big problem. This is because of two things. First, in recent decades we’ve been filling our homes with ever more heavily-processed materials, from MDF to laminate flooring. Second, energy efficiency measures mean that our homes are no longer the draughty places they used to be. This stops chemicals from escaping, and allows them to build up to a level that can cause health problems. At Markes, we’ve helped organisations investigate emissions from a wide variety of such materials, using instruments that make it easy to analyse lots of them in a short time.

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Our instruments in action ▪▪ Visit the Odournet webpage for a video that shows our equipment being used by odour consultants for testing of building materials. ▪▪ So-called ‘standard methods’ set a benchmark for how to analyse a wide variety of sample types. Our equipment is cited in two standard methods for building products – find out more on our website.

Consumer goods Aiding research into the chemical content of everyday products

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hhh… you can’t beat a nice scented candle to chill out at the end of a stressful week. But hang on a minute – what is that nice smell?

It turns out the chemicals released by such everyday objects – whether or not they’re fragranced – might not be doing us much good. From deodorant to dummies, make-up to mothballs, few things are free from suspicion. Some of them at least are thought to cause allergic reactions. It’s the job of the analyst to work out what these chemical emissions are... which is a big challenge. Not only are there literally millions of these products, but formulations are continually changing. Our equipment’s proved useful in this field, to help fill the gap in knowledge about some of the worstoffending products.

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Our instruments in action ▪▪ Read this blog post to learn how chemical screening using our equipment can address worries around chemicals in consumer goods. ▪▪ See this article in LCGC: The Column to find out how our equipment can be used to detect hazardous chemicals in cosmetics.

Forensic investigations

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Forensic investigations Providing solid evidence for the courts

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ingerprints, blood spots, and DNA analysis – forensics is all about using science to solve crime.

The role of chemicals Chemicals have a big role to play in this. Even the tiniest fragment of material can contain tell-tale chemicals that help secure a conviction – or prove innocence.

At Markes, we provide scientists with the tools they need to rigorously examine scene-of-crime materials, and so uncover the clear evidence the justice system demands. The following pages highlights two interesting examples of this.

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Title goes here Chemicals from bodies Understanding the processes of decomposition

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t may not be a pleasant thought, but when we die and our bodies decompose, a vast number of volatile chemicals are released.

The precise pattern of chemicals depends on a number of things, especially the local conditions and the time since death. It’s a complex area, though, and the subject of continuing research. The information provided by our instruments helps forensic researchers refine their methods, and so ultimately improve the quality of evidence presented in court.

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Our instruments in action ▪▪ Dogs are outstanding at finding human remains – but they need to be trained. This paper in the journal PLOS One describes how our equipment can provide the information needed to train them. ▪▪ Volatiles can also be used to detect the chemical signatures from people trapped in buildings after earthquakes. See the website of a European project for more on how we’ve been involved.

Title goes here forensics Environmental Helping to trace pollution sources

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hen a major chemical spill occurs, environmental agencies need to know who to blame. Sometimes it’s easy to find this out, but when it isn’t, people have been turning to ‘environmental forensics’ for answers. This basically works the same way as fingerprinting – except with chemicals. A sample from the pollution scene is analysed to identify all the chemicals it contains. This list is then compared to those from the suspected sources, to find the best match. Markes has helped in this field by developing advanced analytical techniques that can quickly identify very similar chemicals. This helps scientists to generate a good ‘chemical fingerprint’, and so be more confident about identifying the polluters.

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Our instruments in action ▪▪ Professor Steve Rowland at Plymouth University has been using our equipment to help identify chemicals in oil spills – see his webpage for more about his work. ▪▪ Our Select-eV technology is good at quickly identifying similar chemicals – which is very useful in environmental forensics. Take a look at this edition of Advances Wales (page 20) for more.

Biological monitoring

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Biological monitoring Making our lives healthier by detecting volatile chemicals in the body

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our body is full of chemicals – primarily big molecules like sugars, fats, and proteins. There are also lots of small molecules known as metabolites, and people are finding out that these can tell us interesting things about how healthy we are.

Diagnosis using chemical information These chemicals are actually relatively easy to collect. The big challenge for researchers is to see if information about them can shed light on the ailments we suffer from.

At Markes, we’ve been helping to develop this area, known as ‘biological monitoring’, ever since we were founded in 1997. The following example illustrates what we’ve been looking at.

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Title goesdiagnosis Disease here Devising simpler ways to diagnose life-threatening diseases

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ancer, heart disease and diabetes affect lots of people. But diagnosing these serious diseases is often painful, invasive and time-consuming. Fortunately, though, quick tests that tell the doctor you’re ‘at risk’ could soon be around the corner. These tests involve collecting the chemicals in your breath or urine, and then seeing whether or not the pattern of these chemicals matches those known to indicate disease. Cheap, quick, and with no needles, these methods would be ideal for routine monitoring of large populations – and we’ve been supplying equipment to help researchers in reaching that goal.

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Our instruments in action ▪▪ Researchers at Swansea University have used our breath-monitoring equipment to help diagnose diseases including cancer. Read this BBC News article for more. ▪▪ Watch this YouTube video to learn how the University of Warwick are using our equipment to assist faster diagnoses of serious gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases.

An award-winning business W

e hope you’ve found these pages interesting, and that they help you to make sense of some of the issues surrounding chemicals in our modern world. Across all the areas we’ve described, we’re deeply enthused about our work and the positive role that science can play in the world today. This is because, by helping our customers solve their most difficult problems, we’re using the power of modern analytical chemistry to make the world safer and healthier for us all.

An enterprising company As a highly science-driven business, it goes without saying that we’re experts in what we do. But it’s not just science we’re good at – we’re also experts at business. This has been recognised by innovation and marketing awards, and most recently by a prestigious Queen’s Award for export. Find out more about our Queen’s Award here.

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Any questions? Would you like to know more about how Markes helps scientists to make our world safer and healthier? Just drop us a line and we’ll do our best to help, or point you in the right direction.

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Markes International Since 1997, Markes International has been at the forefront of innovation for enhancing the measurement of trace-level volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds (VOCs and SVOCs) by gas chromatography (GC). Our range of thermal desorption products has set the benchmark for quality and reliability for well over a decade. By lowering detection limits, and increasing the options open to the analyst, our thermal desorbers greatly extend the application range of GC. Our comprehensive portfolio of thermal desorption products includes instruments such as UNITY™ and TD-100™, a wide range of high-quality sorbent tubes, and innovative accessories that allow representative vapour profiles to be collected with minimal inconvenience. In addition to our long-established reputation for thermal desorption, Markes also developed and manufactures the groundbreaking BenchTOF™ range of time-of-flight mass spectrometers for GC, featuring innovative and labour-saving software, and revolutionary Select-eV® technology for hassle-free soft ionisation. As well as flavour and fragrance profiling, Markes’ products are used extensively in multiple routine and research applications – everything from environmental analysis to metabolomic studies. Markes is headquartered near Cardiff, UK, and also has laboratory and demonstration facilities in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and near Frankfurt, Germany. Markes is a company of the Schauenburg International Group.

Markes International Ltd Gwaun Elai Medi-Science Campus, Llantrisant, RCT, CF72 8XL, UK T: +44 (0)1443 230935, F: +44 (0)1443 231531, E: [email protected], W: www.markes.com Markes International, Inc. 11126-D Kenwood Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45242, USA T: 866-483-5684 (toll-free), F: 513-745-0741, E: [email protected], W: www.markes.com Markes International GmbH Schleussnerstrasse 42, D-63263 Neu-Isenburg, Frankfurt, Germany T: +49 (0)6102 8825569, F: +49 (0)6102 8825583, E: [email protected], W: www.markes.com