Monthly Archives: August 2026

A bottle of olive oil or a tanker of refined soybean oil looks simple enough on the label, but at the parts-per-billion level, it's a surprisingly complicated matrix to analyze. Trace metals in edible oils matter for two very different reasons — food safety and shelf life — and both push laboratories toward lower and lower detection limits. For labs running ICP-OES or ICP-MS on oils, that means calibration standards have to keep up.

Two reasons trace metals matter in oils

The first reason is toxicology. Regulatory bodies including the EU (Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/915) and Codex Alimentarius set maximum levels for lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury across food categories, and fats and oils are no exception — lead limits for most fats and oils sit near 0.1 mg/kg, with correspondingly tight limits for the other regulated elements. Meeting these limits with confidence requires a method whose detection limit sits comfortably below

If your lab only ever tests food destined for one country, you calibrate to one set of limits and move on. The moment a product crosses a border, that gets more complicated — and the reference point most of the world works from is Codex Alimentarius.

What Codex actually is

Codex Alimentarius isn't a single country's food law. It's a joint FAO/WHO body that sets internationally recognized food standards, and the relevant one here is the General Standard for Contaminants and Toxins in Food and Feed (CXS 193-1995). First adopted in 1995 and revised repeatedly since, it lists maximum levels (MLs) for contaminants — including toxic elements like lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury, and tin — across a wide range of food commodities.

Because Codex standards are referenced under the WTO's Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement, they function as the default benchmark in international food trade, even in countries that also maint

Canadian Mining Magazine recently featured Inorganic Ventures in the article, "When Every Gram Counts: The Rising Importance of Analytical Accuracy in Mining," written by Brian Alexander, PhD, president of Inorganic Ventures, exploring how rising commodity prices and increasingly complex ore deposits are pushing mining operations toward greater analytical rigor.

The article discusses how, as gold and rare earth projects operate closer

Analytik.news recently featured Inorganic Ventures in the article, "Trace-Level Testing, Validation Pressure, and the New Demands on Pharma Labs," examining how pharmaceutical labs are adapting to tighter impurity thresholds and faster development timelines.

The article explores how sample preparation, digestion, calibration alignment, traceability, and method validation all influence whether elemental impurity data can withstand regulatory

Instrumentation Monthly recently featured Inorganic Ventures in the article, "Trace-Level Testing, Validation Pressure, and the New Demands on Pharma Labs," examining how pharmaceutical labs are adapting to tighter impurity thresholds and faster development timelines.