V Bellon-Maurel | PubMed Health

PubMed2000

An automated test for measuring polymer biodegradation.

The biodegradability of polymer materials as evaluated by the modified Sturm test is labor-intensive, cumbersome and costly and also tends to cumulate errors. An automated system for the measurement of carbon dioxide would overcome many of these disadvantages. We describe here a method in which CO2 was determined by IR spectroscopy. We compared the results with those from trapping CO2 in a solution of barium hydroxide (Ba(OH)2) followed by manual titration. The automated system was more reproducible, less costly and more compact. The automated system could also be employed to measure the biodegradability of other substances such as oils and detergents.

Automation↗

PubMed1999

Production of polyclonal antibodies towards the immunodetection of insecticide phosalone.

Hapten synthesis for the production of specific insecticide phosalone polyclonal antibodies was carried out starting from an intermediate of the phosalone synthesis, 6-chloro-2-benzoxazolone 1. Two haptens containing different spacers have been prepared: N-5-carboxypentyl-6-chloro-2-benzoxazolone 7 and N-(2-oxo-3-aza-5-carboxypentyl)-6-chloro-2-benzoxazolone 12. Each of these two haptens conjugated to bovine serum albumine (BSA) was used to immunize four rabbits. Immunoassays of phosalone were performed with ELISA using solid-phase bound hapten thyroglobulin conjugate and horseradish peroxidase labelled goat antirabbit IgG. The more sensitive response was observed when the antiserum obtained from the rabbit immunized with the hapten-BSA conjugate containing the N-2-oxo-3-aza-5-carboxypentyl spacer was in competition with the same hapten coupled to thyroglobulin. An identical response was obtained under the same conditions when using benzoxazolone instead of phosalone as competitor, showing a good recognition of the specific aromatic part of the organophosphate insecticide phosalone. Reduction of coating conjugate concentration (from 2 to 0.05 micrograms/well) and also the use of heterologous coating protein instead of homologous did improve the sensitivity, resulting in a concentration of phosalone required to inhibit binding by 50% of 2 mg/l and a detection limit of 0.02 mg/l.

Animals↗