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Humboldt Field Research Institute

Posted March 22, 1999

New Pesticide Detection Method Developed in Food Science and Human Nutrition

Donna Eash, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Maine Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, likes a good challenge. Rock climbing and skiing are two of her current passions, and through her research, she has tackled the intricacies of a demanding new process for detecting pesticides in food and water.

Over the past four years, Eash has mastered the techniques of capillary electrophoresis (CE) in collaboration with her advisor, Professor Rodney Bushway.

Eash, a native of the Manchester, New Hampshire area, became the department's resident expert on the process which is now used in the pharmaceutical, medical and food processing industries. CE offers analytical chemists an alternative to other standard techniques. It uses small sample volumes and avoids toxic organic solvents which can pose a waste disposal problem with other methods.

“The biggest challenge for me has been learning to be patient,” she says. “This is relatively new technology, and no one here had used it when the machine arrived four years ago. After the representative from Hewlett Packard set up the machine and gave us the instructions, we had to learn it from the ground up, the theory, the methods, the software, everything.”

She admits that on some days, she went home feeling frustrated that the steps she was following weren't working out. “I just had to get over it and come back the next morning and start over,” she says.

Eventually, Eash developed and verified new methods to detect hexazinone, known commercially as Velpar, an herbicide which is used in Maine on blueberry barrens and transportation corridors. Velpar has been detected in very low concentrations in drinking water wells and groundwater in Maine.

Other pesticides for which she worked out analytical methods include thiabendazole and malic hydrazide.

Being able to use the latest technology in pesticide detection gives Eash a marketable skill, she says. Her job search includes companies and government agencies, including the FBI, all on the East Coast. Prior to coming to UMaine, she worked as a medical technologist for Concord Hospital in New Hampshire. She received her bachelors degree from the University of New Hampshire in medical technology, and while she was working full time, she pursued her masters degree in clinical laboratory sciences from the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

“When I attended UMass-Lowell I worked on oryzanol levels in rice oil. That sparked my interest in a career in the food industry and sharpened my skills in chromatography,” she says. “I was looking at Ph.D. programs around the country, and working with Dr. Bushway was the most attractive option for me. I feel so lucky to have him as an advisor. He has supported my travel to conferences to present the results of my research, and he has always insisted that if I did the work and wrote the paper, my name was first as the author.”

Eash has also provided assistance to other faculty and students in the department. For example she assisted with a project to analyze concentrations of a cholesterol reducing component of rice oil and worked with a masters student on analyzing levels of tri-poly-phosphate in processed lobsters.

Eash has published her work in four peer reviewed journals: the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the Journal of High Performance and Liquid Chromatography, Journal of Chromatography, and the Journal of the AOAC International. At the end of March, she made a presentation to the Food and Agricultural Division of the American Chemical Society at the national ACS meeting in Anaheim, California.

In addition to conducting her research, Eash took classes in lipid chemistry from Dorothy Klimis and vitamins in nutrition from Linda Kling. She also found time to become involved in student affairs and is currently the vice-president of the Association of Graduate Students.

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