Purdue researchers attack food contamination with lasers and gas

When it comes to homeland security, no university may be as underrated at Purdue. Perhaps this is because of its midwestern location, far from the excitement of Washington and New York and equally distant from the technological hotbeds that make up the University of California system. We, however, have not been remiss in pointing out Purdue’s numerous security-related successes over the past few years. These have included the development of a new technique to grow individual carbon nanotubes vertically on top of a silicon wafer for the purpose of creating “vertically oriented” nanoelectronic devices; an iris scanner specifically designed to weed out disaster relief fraud; participation in the Northwest Indiana Computation Grid and the creation of a new Cyber Center to model chemical, biological, and radiological attacks; and a portable mass spectrometer to detect explosives.

These are all worthy initiatives, but they are only the tip of the iceberg. Consider two new technologies being developed at Perdue to prevent the outbreak of food-borne illnesses such as E. coli. By shining a laser though a petri dish containing bacterial colonies, the “Bacteria Rapid Detection Using Optical Scattering Technology” can identify a particular strain by its “scatter pattern” — how light is reflected off the orgranism. Researchers say the method is about three times faster and one-tenth as expensive as current identification technology.

Identifying bacteria is just the first step, however. One needs to kill them as well. Perdue researchers have developed a method of using chlorine dioxide gas to kill pathogens lingering on fresh produce, a method said to be a major improvement on washing and scrubbing. Further work remains to determine the appropriate appplication amount, but that is not stopping the scioentists from moving forward with the development of an industrial tunnel system to apply the gas. “If the product is safe, but nobody will eat it, that’s not what we want,” professor Richard Linton said. “We are always thinking in terms of, ‘Will this work for industry?’ In this case, I believe the answer is yes. I would like to see this technology used regularly by industry in a couple years from now.”

Indeed, industry is already showing interest in both technologies. Investors should step lively so as not to be left behind.

-read more in this university news release