Yaxi Hu, a UBC PhD candidate, has won the Mitacs Award for Outstanding Innovation for her method of detecting contaminated food, the Vancouver Sun reported.
Hu works with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to detect a cancer-causing food dye called Sudan I. She is also working on detecting a common toxin in clams and mussels called domoic acid.
She said current methods used by government laboratories to analyze food are usually accurate but complex, time-consuming and labour-intensive and can miss previously unknown contaminants.
“Official methods targeted at specific compounds might fail to detect the new adulteration behaviour using other compounds,” Hu said. “Spectrographic methods (make) the detection of a new type of food fraud feasible.”
The story also appeared in The Province and the Edmonton Journal and a similar story appeared on CKNW.
