Food Safety and Environmental Stewardship Program

Re-circulating aquaculture systems may occasionally become contaminated or amplify biological or chemical agents. For instance, increased prevalence of intestinal cancers have been observed in some zebrafish re-circulating aquaculture facilities. The etiology of these neoplasms are unknown. We used passive sampling devices in re-circulating aquaculture systems to sequester a suite of non-polar and semi-polar contaminants. Passive sampling devices sequester and concentrate a wide range of contaminants that may be at very low concentrations within a system, thus are well suited to investigate contamination and episodic exposure events. Through the use of Agilent's Retention Time Locking software, Deconvolution Reporting Software and combining several mass spectral libraries, we were able to screen the passive sampling device extracts for nearly 2000 potential contaminants with gas chromatography mass spectrometry. Included in our screen were over 900 pesticides and endocrine disruptors, PCBs, along with a wide range of other chemicals. The passive sampling device extracts were also used with the embryonic zebrafish toxicity model where fish were grown out to determine if similar types of cancer formed.