Carbon-14 Testing can Verify if Ingredients are Naturally Sourced
The rising consumer demand for naturally sourced supplements highlights the need to test botanical ingredients for potential adulteration, Beta Analytic’s Haley Gershon explains in a recent article published in Natural Products Insider.
Within the supplement and natural products industry, cases of adulteration are often due to intentions of economic gain, causing some companies to mislabel petrochemical-derived product ingredients as natural. Quality control departments are aware of the potential for ingredient adulteration and often turn to analytical methods like carbon-14 testing to address this industry challenge.
Products sourced only from plants, animals or microbiological materials tend to be more expensive in comparison to their petroleum-derived counterparts. This may lead manufacturers or distributors to fraudulently substitute biomass material with cheaper, petrochemical-derived ingredients and mislabel the counterfeit ingredients as naturally sourced.
Carbon-14 testing measures the exact percentage of carbon in a product that comes from biomass-based sources. All materials comprised of biomass sources contain a known amount of the isotope carbon-14, whereas fossil materials like petroleum have no carbon-14.
Carbon-14 testing of natural products is an established method according to standards such as ASTM International D6866 and International Organization for Standardization ISO 16620-2. These standards were developed to determine the biobased content of solid, liquid and gaseous material using carbon-14 analysis, applicable to several products including supplements, flavors, fragrances, foods and beverages.
Full Article: Reduce botanical adulteration with carbon-14 testing (October 2019)
High-Quality Carbon-14 Results
ISO 17025-accredited lab Beta Analytic provides rapid, high-quality carbon-14 analysis of supplements, nutraceuticals, and other natural products using analytical standards ASTM D6866 and ISO 16620-2.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 7th, 2019 and is filed under Natural Product Testing, Supplement Carbon-14 Testing .