Measuring off-Odours in Pharmaceutical Products

The presence of an off-odour in a pharmaceutical product is a serious quality problem – even if there is no safety issue.

Compounds responsible for off-odours are often present at very low levels. Chloroanisols, for example, are detectable by consumers at low ng/L concentrations.

To be able to reliably measure these compounds at these low levels, a powerful extraction and concentration technique is needed, that can cover a wide range of volatilities and give good quantitative data at ultra-trace levels.

Headspace Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction (HS SBSE) is a good choice, offering significant advantages over other headspace techniques such as SPME, that stem from the much larger volume of sorbent phase used.

You may be interested to read this article from GERSTEL’s latest Solutions magazine that tells the story of how one lab used HS SBSE to tackle their off-odour problems.

If you find this article relevant to your work and would like to know more, please call us on 01223 279 210 or email: enquiries@anatune.co.uk.