In April, we proud­ly ce­le­bra­ted the in­au­gu­ra­ti­on of the Joint La­bo­ra­to­ry for In-Situ Mass Spec­tro­me­try in Emer­ging Con­ta­mi­nant Re­se­arch in Bei­jing – an ex­ci­ting mi­le­stone in glo­bal en­vi­ron­men­tal in­no­va­ti­on. The lab is the re­sult of a stra­te­gic part­ner­ship bet­ween the Sta­te Key La­bo­ra­to­ry of En­vi­ron­men­tal Che­mis­try and Eco­to­xi­co­lo­gy (SKLECE), ASPEC Tech­no­lo­gies, and Plas­mi­on GmbH.

Emer­ging con­ta­mi­nants such as PFAS, en­do­cri­ne dis­rup­t­ors, and per­sis­tent or­ga­nic pol­lut­ants are dra­wing in­cre­asing glo­bal at­ten­ti­on due to their com­ple­xi­ty, per­sis­tence, and po­ten­ti­al he­alth risks—even at ul­tra-trace le­vels. Tra­di­tio­nal me­thods of­ten fall short in de­tec­ting and re­spon­ding to the­se sub­s­tances ef­fec­tively. That’s whe­re ad­van­ced in-situ mass spec­tro­me­try co­mes in.

At the he­art of this col­la­bo­ra­ti­on is our cut­ting-edge io­niza­ti­on tech­no­lo­gy, SICRIT® (Soft Io­niza­ti­on by Che­mi­cal Re­ac­tion in Trans­fer). SICRIT® dra­sti­cal­ly sim­pli­fies sam­ple pre­pa­ra­ti­on while enhan­cing the ana­ly­ti­cal power nee­ded for high-th­rough­put and field-ba­sed scree­ning. At the launch event, it re­cei­ved strong re­co­gni­ti­on for its sen­si­ti­vi­ty and prac­ti­cal in­te­gra­ti­on.

Du­ring the in­au­gu­ra­ti­on, Aca­de­mici­an Guib­in Jiang, a lea­ding fi­gu­re in en­vi­ron­men­tal che­mis­try, em­pha­si­zed the uni­que va­lue of am­bi­ent and in-situ mass spec­tro­me­try, espe­ci­al­ly un­der the in­cre­asing com­ple­xi­ty of en­vi­ron­men­tal mix­tures:
“Io­niza­ti­on has no li­mi­ta­ti­on,” Jiang no­ted. “We are en­te­ring an era that de­mands ra­pid de­tec­tion, pre­cise quan­ti­fi­ca­ti­on, and real-time re­spon­se. Mass spec­tro­me­try must now go bey­ond in­stru­ment sen­si­ti­vi­ty, brea­king th­rough bar­riers in sam­ple ac­qui­si­ti­on and io­niza­ti­on me­thods.”

He fur­ther high­ligh­ted that no­vel soft io­niza­ti­on tech­no­lo­gies such as SICRIT® will play a pi­vo­tal role in en­ab­ling real-time mo­ni­to­ring of en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­po­sure and buil­ding ef­fi­ci­ent scree­ning sys­tems for trace-le­vel pol­lut­ants.

Dr. He Cui, Se­ni­or Re­se­ar­cher at Qing­dao Cus­toms Tech­ni­cal Cen­ter, no­ted SICRIT®’s ex­cel­lent per­for­mance in de­tec­ting low-po­la­ri­ty and low-ab­un­dance com­pounds, espe­ci­al­ly for cus­toms in­spec­tion, emer­gen­cy re­spon­se, and high-risk zone scree­ning.

Pro­fes­sor Ya­wei Wang, Di­rec­tor of SKLECE, gave an over­view of the lab’s stra­te­gic re­se­arch fo­cus and key achie­ve­ments in emer­ging con­ta­mi­nants. Sin­ce 1999, the lab has led foun­da­tio­nal work in en­vi­ron­men­tal to­xi­co­lo­gy, in­clu­ding ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­ti­on of en­do­cri­ne dis­rup­t­ors and the de­ve­lo­p­ment of China’s pol­lutant in­vent­ories, ex­po­sure da­ta­ba­ses, and he­alth risk as­sess­ment mo­dels.

The live de­mons­tra­ti­ons show­ca­sed how SICRIT® can em­power sci­en­tists and re­gu­la­tors ali­ke with im­me­dia­te in­sights into en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­po­sure. This Joint Lab is more than a fa­ci­li­ty – it’s a plat­form for glo­bal col­la­bo­ra­ti­on, in­no­va­ti­on, and im­pact.

We at Plas­mi­on are ex­ci­ted to be part of this jour­ney and look for­ward to ad­van­cing the fu­ture of en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ence tog­e­ther.