I know someone, who was working at a company that does food testing in Germany.
When it comes to pesticides, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) set maximum amounts, German authorities set more stringent rules on the allowed pesticides and then German supermarkets overperform by requiring even stronger limits.
On the other hand, the standard techniques that are used to pick up contaminants in food do not pick up microplastics. There are no official limits exposed by EFSA for microplastics.
If you think that low-effort good spectrometers will give you good information about microplastics pollution or poisoning attempts by skilled attackers, I think you overrate what you could detect that way.
Theranos was built on the idea that you can detect a lot if you combine microfluid technology alone with spectrometers and they failed despite investing significant research money.
Does Germany have a lot of food/MP testing companies? Germany seems highly represented in analytical chemistry, as I saw from the SLAS2024 conference.. (for all those people who complain about “lack of innovation” in Europe, they’re all underrating analytical chemistry). This conforms to stereotypes about Germans and precision..
(and the culture of Germany is WAY more amendable to eco-consciousness/environmental health than the culture of America)
It would be nice (even in fringe cases) to have one country/area dedicated to being microplastic/pollution free so that people could travel there and then test to see if they feel healthier there (people who have multiple chemical sensitivities often have life-defining levels of motivation for this). Like, this would be the very definition of a health-conscious resort/recovery/convalescence spa.. (people used to go to the mountains for this)
I know someone, who was working at a company that does food testing in Germany.
When it comes to pesticides, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) set maximum amounts, German authorities set more stringent rules on the allowed pesticides and then German supermarkets overperform by requiring even stronger limits.
On the other hand, the standard techniques that are used to pick up contaminants in food do not pick up microplastics. There are no official limits exposed by EFSA for microplastics.
If you think that low-effort good spectrometers will give you good information about microplastics pollution or poisoning attempts by skilled attackers, I think you overrate what you could detect that way.
Theranos was built on the idea that you can detect a lot if you combine microfluid technology alone with spectrometers and they failed despite investing significant research money.
Does Germany have a lot of food/MP testing companies? Germany seems highly represented in analytical chemistry, as I saw from the SLAS2024 conference.. (for all those people who complain about “lack of innovation” in Europe, they’re all underrating analytical chemistry). This conforms to stereotypes about Germans and precision..
(and the culture of Germany is WAY more amendable to eco-consciousness/environmental health than the culture of America)
It would be nice (even in fringe cases) to have one country/area dedicated to being microplastic/pollution free so that people could travel there and then test to see if they feel healthier there (people who have multiple chemical sensitivities often have life-defining levels of motivation for this). Like, this would be the very definition of a health-conscious resort/recovery/convalescence spa.. (people used to go to the mountains for this)
This documentary features Germans:
#sense-making