Consumer Goods

SIFT-MS overcomes the inaccuracies and time-consuming steps associated with using chromatography-based methods to screen for contaminants in consumer goods.  Faster time to data and higher throughput can be achieved in consumer safety applications such as testing for carcinogens in personal care products (PCPs), mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOSH and MOAH) in food products, and volatile leachables in packaging and polymers. 

This application note describes the application of MHE-SIFT-MS to detection of C1 -C10 aldehydes and other oxygenated volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in paperboard.

This webcast focuses on case studies that demonstrate simple analysis of chromatographically challenging compounds. Formaldehyde receives special attention, as it is important across a wide range of industries (from environmental to pharmaceutical testing).

This webinar describes a recent addition to the portfolio of techniques available for routine sample analysis: SIFT-MS. SIFT-MS enables rapid, quantitative analysis of VOCs across the full spectrum of packaging materials.  Detailed case studies will describe applications in polymeric and paperboard emissions analysis.

This application note describes the application of SH-SIFT-MS to the detection of very diverse volatiles in eleven paperboard samples with analysis times of less than one minute per sample.

This webinar addresses chemical and sensory-like analysis using SIFT-MS in the context of odors from paperboard packaging.  SIFT-MS is a powerful tool for rapid instrument-based sensory screening.

In this webinar, we demonstrate the advantages of using automated SIFT-MS to analyze volatiles in diverse matrices: from air samples to the headspace of polymers, soil and water samples. Formaldehyde and the BTEX compounds (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and the xylenes) will be utilized in various case studies. In addition, high-throughput thermal desorption-SIFT-MS and real-time thermal extraction-SIFT-MS are presented for the first time.

Learn how you can adopt direct mass spectrometry in your routine analysis workflow.  Adaptation of routine procedures and techniques to automated SIFT-MS will be illustrated with case studies applicable to environmental, consumer product and biomedical laboratory testing. In particular, a head-to-head comparison of GC/MS and SIFT-MS for headspace analysis of volatiles in blood plasma will be described.

This Syft App Talk describes how the SIFT-MS technique makes determination of formaldehyde adsorption by materials, such as wool, rapid and simple. 

In this presentation, examples of real-time thermal extraction and analysis of various plastic materials using TD-SIFT-MS are demonstrated, and its application to product development and processing environments are discussed. Direct, continuous analysis of formaldehyde from polyoxymethylene (POM) is of particular significance.

In this sixth and final episode, Dr Perkins reflects on the automation journey and shares his practical "hot tips" for a wide variety of automated analyses.  The webinar (and series!) concludes with a discussion of how automated SIFT-MS is an excellent complementary technique to the conventional laboratory "workhorse" techniques: gas and liquid chromatography.

In this fifth episode, Dr Perkins describes the novel continuous headspace analysis (CHA) technique that he developed to measure stripping of volatiles. (Note: CHA is not to be confused with dynamic headspace analysis!).  In addition, Mark describes simple, very high-throughput gas sample bag analysis and touches on other recent developments – including thermal desorption-SIFT-MS.

In this fourth episode, Dr Perkins describes how simply and rapidly traditional instrument calibration is achieved with the automated SIFT-MS configuration. Traditional calibration approaches have not featured regularly in the SIFT-MS literature due to the widespread use of reliable library-based quantitation. However, calibration is essential for contract testing laboratories, so it is addressed in detail and from a number of different angles in this webinar.

In this third episode, Dr Perkins describes the application of SIFT-MS to multiple headspace extraction (MHE).  You will learn how to determine matrix-independent concentrations from MHE. Furthermore, Dr Perkins describes how the speed of SIFT-MS analysis can be leveraged to accelerate method development for both SIFT-MS and conventional methods – for example, through rapid determination of headspace equilibration times.

In this second episode, Dr Perkins provides a practical guide to automated static headspace (SH) analysis with SIFT-MS.  You will learn how SH-SIFT-MS can address throughput challenges and simplify analysis of chromatographically challenging species.

In this first episode, Dr Perkins answers the important question:

Why Automate Analysis?

This webinar introduces the benefits of automation and discusses how they can be applied to SIFT-MS, enabling straightforward adoption by the contract laboratory.

Headspace-SIFT-MS can screen over 220 samples per day for volatile MOSH and MOAH compounds – nearly seven-fold more samples than the routine liquid and gas chromatography method.

We asked Mike McGinley, President, St. Croix Sensory, Inc. about his experience using SIFT-MS.  Hear what he had to say about the speed of analysis and flexibility inherent to Syft's product solutions.

SIFT-MS provides rapid, sensitive, and robust analysis of benzene and other contaminants in a wide array of commercial products. Integration with a headspace autosampler enables rapid screening of hundreds of samples per day.

We asked David Light, CEO and Founder of Valisure, about his experience using SIFT-MS and how it impacted their dry shampoo safety study.  

Automated headspace-SIFT-MS analysis can classify pelleted recycled HDPE at throughputs over 230 samples per day, offering great potential for rapid screening of recycled packaging materials.

Automated SIFT-MS analysis rapidly screens paperboard packaging for a wide range of functional groups in a single analysis, assuring that the volatile emissions meet manufacturer specifications.  This application note describes a Headspace-SIFT-MS method with throughput >10X faster than traditional GC/MS methods.

Quantitative determination of volatile aldehyde residues in paperboard is readily achieved using multiple headspace extraction-SIFT-MS analysis, with an eight-fold throughput increase over the equivalent conventional analysis.

Automated SIFT-MS analysis coupled with multivariate statistical analysis provides rapid sensory screening of paperboard packaging, overcoming the low sample throughput of sensory panels.  The ability to use HS-SIFT-MS to achieve throughput of 12 samples per hour is demonstrated.

SIFT-MS provides real-time, selective, and economic analysis of challenging volatile compounds, such as residual solvents, formaldehyde, dimethylamine, and NDMA without requiring derivatization or other special handling.

Pharmaceutical and food products are susceptible to contamination from packaging, whether from polymeric materials, printing inks, or paperboard.  SIFT-MS, a high-sensitivity direct-injection mass spectrometry technique, enables risks associated with sustainable packaging alternatives to be mitigated through economical, high-throughput automated analysis (typically a 4- to 15-fold increase over GC-MS).

MHE-SIFT-MS provides rapid, matrix-independent, quantitative determination of volatile leachables in polymers and calibrates quantitative analysis based on single headspace injections.  This approach enables over 200 samples per day to be analyzed, delivering rapid and economic analysis of volatile leachables such as residual monomers.

This app note introduces the next generation of SIFT-MS, Syft Tracer^TM, which launched at Pittcon 2023.  It revolutionizes volatile impurities analysis workflows through unparalleled speed, performance stability, and reproducibility.  Learn about how this innovation to real-time trace gas detection outpaces chromatography-based methods in the analysis of challenging analytes such as formaldehyde in a PEG excipient.

This application note describes head-to-head comparison of GC-FID and SIFT-MS analyses of Class 2A and 2B residual solvents. The techniques perform similarly for linearity and repeatability, but SIFT-MS provides superior performance for accuracy and recovery. Furthermore, SIFT-MS provides greater than 11-fold increase in sample throughput and significantly reduces the time taken to report quantitative results (over six times faster for a full calibration set).

SIFT‐MS is now recognized as the most versatile analytical technique for the identification and quantification of trace gases down to the parts‐per‐trillion by volume, pptv, range. This statement is supported by the wide reach of its applications, from real‐time analysis, obviating sample collection of very humid exhaled breath, to its adoption in industrial scenarios for air quality monitoring. This review touches on the recent extensions to the underpinning ion chemistry kinetics library and the alternative challenge of using nitrogen carrier gas instead of helium. 

SIFT-MS has been widely applied to quantitative analysis of a broad range of VOCs in applications from food products to workplace safety to environmental monitoring, and most recently to pharmaceutical testing. This review surveys the applications of SIFT-MS in odor analysis and in workplace, environmental and consumer protection, with a particular focus on the complementarity of this real-time mass spectrometry analyzer to sensor technology and conventional laboratory techniques—in particular, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC/MS).

Join us for this webinar to learn about Syft Tracer, the latest advancement of real-time, trace gas analysis by SIFT-MS which launched at Pittcon 2023. Hear how the recent product innovations unlock analytical bottlenecks and enable faster decisions to be made in critical process steps.

Syft Tracer^TM is the latest advancement in real-time, direct injection mass spectrometry (MS) built to solve the most difficult analytical challenges faced within a variety of industries and applications.  This advancement to SIFT-MS delivers trace-level detection sensitivity, unparalleled performance stability, superior selectivity, and highly reproducible, quantitative data.  Syft Tracer is optimized for high-throughput environments where continuous operation is the standard.  Never miss a product or environmental contamination event again.

This application note describes how the efficiency of a MHE workflow can be significantly improved for MHE-SIFT-MS due to the stability of the technique. Formaldehyde impurity is analyzed easily and quantitatively in Gelucire excipient with this improved approach.  The time-to-result is reduced to 85 minutes for this system – six-fold faster than the conventional MHE-SIFT-MS approach.  Quantitative analysis is achieved at the throughput of 220 samples/day.

This application note describes a scenario in which Syft Tracer^TM analyzed the same amount of samples in 9 hours that it took 5 chromatographic systems 24 hours to complete and still had capacity to spare. Next-gen SIFT-MS provides rapid, chromatography-free workflows which revolutionize volatile compound analysis. 

This application note describes high throughput analysis of formaldehyde in fragrances that utilizes a method of standard additions to overcome matrix effects from variable headspace compositions of the samples tested.  SIFT-MS delivers >2X faster time to data with up to 5X greater throughput than chromatographic methods. 

This application brief summarizes a scenario relevant to contract research organization (CRO) and contract drug manufacturing organization (CDMO) laboratories where multiple volatile impurity methods need to be conducted in short runs. Five analyses are considered that can be handled by one Syft Tracer but require multiple legacy, chromatography instruments. For these analyses, SIFT-MS reports the first quantitative results 2- to 12-fold faster, and has sample throughputs 3- to 17-fold higher than the conventional procedures.

The characteristic flexibility, stability, high throughput, and fast time to data of the Syft Tracer next-gen SIFT-MS instrument apply across multiple headspace approaches for diverse matrices. This application note briefly summarizes the use of (1) dissolution, (2) multiple headspace extraction (MHE), and (3) the method of standard additions, then provides a guide for identifying the appropriate headspace approach for various matrices.

This webinar demonstrates how the new, automated Syft Tracer^TM SIFT-MS platform provides a comprehensive solution to workflow challenges and can replace multiple chromatographic systems.  Learn about how combining SIFT-MS with automation provides a very flexible and high throughput solution for screening volatile impurities in pharmaceutical and consumer safety applications, revolutionizing workflows.

This application note demonstrates that SIFT-MS effectively classifies paper samples by odor intensity rating and odor descriptor, in addition to distinguishing paper composition and mill of origin. When integrated with autosamplers, SIFT-MS provides throughputs of over 220 samples per day, supporting significantly enhanced quality assurance compared to conventional human sensory panels and gas chromatography-based analyses.

This study expands upon the previous work by conducting a head-to-head comparison of GC-flame ionization detection (GC-FID) and SIFT-MS procedures.  SIFT-MS analyzed samples over 11-fold faster than GC-FID, increasing daily sample throughput and reducing the time taken to determine the result. The results suggests that residual solvent analysis using SIFT-MS may support workflow improvements for pharmaceutical manufacturers.

This E-book describes how next gen SIFT-MS enables rapid, continuous screening of toxic volatile impurities in pharmaceutical and consumer products. This advancement to SIFT-MS delivers trace-level detection sensitivity, unparalleled performance stability, superior selectivity, and highly reproducible, quantitative data. Never miss a contamination event again. 

In this on-demand webinar, Michael McGinley, President, St. Croix Sensory, describes how SIFT-MS has advanced their ability to rapidly perform odor analysis. A variety of SIFT-MS-based odor applications correlated with conventional sensory panel assessment are presented.  Learn how Syft is Simply. Faster. for the analysis of odor compounds.

This application note investigates concentration dependence of MHE calibration in sample matrix.  Across the full range of analytes investigated in this study, MHE calibration holds for at least one order of magnitude change in sample concentration.  For analytes in the C7–C9 range, the MHE calibration applies over two orders of magnitude analyte concentration. These results mean that the MHE workflow can be applied to a wider range of samples in the matrix, further reducing calibration demand.

This application note describes how SIFT-MS coupled with multivariate statistical analysis can be utilized for rapid screening of pelleted virgin and recycled polypropylene using an untargeted “fingerprinting” approach. Automated headspace-SIFT-MS analysis can classify and qualify polypropylene samples at throughputs of over 230 samples per day, offering great potential for rapid screening of recycled polypropylene feedstock for FCM applications. Adoption of SIFT-MS supports product quality and enhances sustainability.

This application note describes the utility of SIFT-MS in pre-screening polymer packaging materials for volatile MOSH and MOAH compounds.  Automated SIFT-MS can characterize 12 high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and polypropylene (PP) samples per hour, or 220 / day.  Headspace-SIFT-MS readily analyzes benzene at high sensitivity as part of the same analysis.

This study evaluates a headspace-SIFT-MS approach for Polysorbate 80 products from multiple suppliers and evaluates ethylene oxide and acetaldehyde recoveries. Results confirm that the headspace-SIFT-MS procedure reliably quantifies these analytes without requiring purification of Polysorbate 80 for matrix-matching the calibration standard. Hence, headspace-SIFT-MS analysis of ethylene oxide and acetaldehyde can revolutionize existing workflows.

This application note reviews polymer analysis applications of automated headspace-SIFT-MS. Rapid quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) screening of over 220 samples/day can be conducted using targeted or untargeted analysis, while quantitative volatile impurity analysis is achieved efficiently using multiple headspace extraction (MHE)-SIFT-MS. 

In this application note, the SIFT-MS is evaluated for odor analysis at a gelatin factory, together with benchmarking of the effectiveness of an ultraviolet (UV) photolysis technology used for odor mitigation. SIFT-MS is very effective in both applications.  The high-sensitivity, direct analysis eliminates preconcentration, derivatization, and the need for analysis on multiple chromatographic columns that complicate odor analysis in gas and liquid chromatography methods.

This application note summarizes the SIFT-MS results obtained in a study of exposure to VOCs from 26 retail sunscreen products – both VOCs intended as ingredients and those present as contaminants. The commercial products varied widely in VOC content and hence user exposure. Several products contained benzene contamination that was readily quantified using dynamic headspace-SIFT-MS analysis.

This webinar features David Light of Valisure and includes case studies that demonstrate how SIFT-MS provides faster and more accurate analysis of volatile impurities in consumer products.  Learn how benzene has been detected in commercial products like dry shampoo and sunscreens.  

This publication describes the suitability of headspace-SIFT-MS as a potential all-in-one approach to the combined analysis of benzene, 1,4-dioxane, and formaldehyde in personal care products (PCPs).  The results suggest that the headspace SIFT-MS method may hold an 8- to 30-fold throughput advantage over conventional GC-MS analyses. 

In this presentation from Analytica 2024, Marino Beenhakker and Dr. David Muller describe environmental and consumer product applications of next-gen SIFT-MS including ambient air monitoring in New Zealand and PFAS measurement in consumer goods. 

This application note describes an automated headspace-SIFT-MS method that provides rapid, sensitive quantitation of benzene, 1,4-dioxane, and formaldehyde simultaneously in personal care products (PCPs).  Results indicate that SIFT-MS holds an 8- to 30-fold throughput advantage over conventional gas chromatography (GC-MS) analysis. 

Syft Explorer is a comprehensive solution for making real-time mass spec measurements anywhere on-site.  It includes next-gen SIFT-MS, onboard clean dry air, and automatic power management bundled in a mobile format.  Never miss a contamination event again!

We asked Geraint Morgan, Research Fellow at The Open University, about his experience using SIFT-MS.  He discusses how his Syft Tracer has opened up new ways of looking at samples that are difficult to analyze by traditional methods such as formaldehyde and other aldehydes. 

View the plenary talk given on August 23rd at IMSC 2024 in Melbourne, Australia by Dr. Vaughan Langford entitled, "SIFT-MS: Ion-Molecule Chemistry Coupled with Mass Spectrometry for Real-World Applications." Learn about the history of SIFT-MS and the ion chemistry that makes real-time trace gas analysis possible.

Read about Syft's latest developments, applications, product releases and events over the past quarter.  Learn about our real-time solutions for environmental monitoring, detecting nitrosamines in aqueous solutions, and much more!

This application note demonstrates the use of SIFT-MS to optimize the Method of Standard Additions (MoSA) for quantifying volatile impurities in complex matrices such as emulsions. SIFT-MS significantly reduces costs by increasing sample throughput, enabling simultaneous analysis of diverse functionalities, and supporting a wide range of analytes and matrices with a single instrument configuration. The study highlights the efficient analysis of toxic volatile impurities—benzene, 1,4-dioxane, and formaldehyde—in various consumer products and its impact on improving analytical workflows.

This whitepaper highlights the exceptional reproducibility of Syft Technologies' SIFT-MS instruments, showcasing fleet performance across legacy and latest-generation platforms. By comparing standardized analytical methods on multiple instruments, it demonstrates high consistency in trace gas quantitation with 95% confidence intervals below 21% for the Syft Tracer and 38% for legacy devices. The findings emphasize Syft's commitment to advancing reliable, real-time analysis solutions for diverse applications.