Pickering Laboratories – Chromatography Quiz

Announcing the winners of our previous quiz, Chromatography Quiz #48 – Valve Lost Error

Pickering Laboratories would like to congratulate the winners of our previous newsletter’s Chromatography Quiz #48: Kushaal Chokhany from Eurofins BioPharma Product Testing, Narjes Ghafoori from County Public Health Laboratory, Josiah Hakala from Minnesota Department of Health, Marissol Mallon from Suffolk County Water Authority, and Tom Schneider from Suffolk County Water Authority.

Our winners will shortly be receiving a delicious Snack Lovers Box! A gourmet assortment of sweet and savory goodies. The perfect time for Fall snacking and Football viewing!

Congratulations to our quiz winners! Thank you all for your submissions!

Chromatography Quiz #48 Solution:

The seals in the valve are too tight. When the valve seals are too tight, they place too much load on the valve motor. The motor may then be unable to move the valve insert properly, causing the insert to miss its targeted position and the valve to become “lost.”

To correct the problem, clean the valve and replace the seals with new seals. Incorporating a flush method at the end of your sequence can also help extend the life of your pump and valve seals.

A common troubleshooting technique can help determine whether the Valve Lost Error is being caused by the valve face or by the valve motor assembly. Power down the Onyx, remove the valve face so there is no load on the valve motor, then power the Onyx back on and allow it to perform the valve initialization process.

If the valve completes initialization with no load on the motor, this indicates that the valve face is causing the Valve Lost Error. If the valve cannot complete initialization even with no load on the motor, this can indicate a problem with the valve motor assembly or a board failure.

For further troubleshooting assistance, contact support@pickeringlabs.com.

Quiz #49 – Better Late Than Never?

Something isn’t quite right with this Carbamates analysis. The chromatogram below shows an overlay of two runs using the same time scale.

The blue trace represents a good Carbamates chromatogram, while the red trace represents the problem chromatogram. Compared with the blue chromatogram, the peaks in the red chromatogram are eluting later than expected, with a smaller response for several of the peaks.

Chromatographic Conditions

Imagine the red chromatogram appeared during your analysis. Where would you start troubleshooting?

What problem could explain both the late-eluting peaks and the smaller response?

Submit your answers to rsmith@pickeringlabs.com by [DATE]!

Gloria 35^th Anniversary and Ed 25^th Anniversary!

By: Rebecca Smith and Christopher Nguyen

Pickering Labs is incredibly lucky to have wonderful employees who choose to work for us for decades, and look no further than the two HUGE anniversaries that we celebrated over the Summer for some top-shelf team-mates!  Gloria Garcia and Ed Cowan are both integral parts of our company and we thank them SO much for all the years of service! 

What doesn’t Gloria do at Pickering Labs?!  That is the most appropriate question that can be asked after her 35 YEARS of dedicated service!  Gloria has worn many hats throughout her years at the lab, and she even started work when we were in our old building!  Gloria is our longest-tenured employee and she is such a valuable asset.  From building relationships with customers to planning employee parties to collecting payments (and everything in between!), we don’t know what we would do without her. 

Congratulations Gloria on 35 amazing years! For three and a half decades, you’ve been the friendly face, steady voice, and behind-the-scenes magician who somehow keeps everything—and everyone—moving in the right direction. 

And now to our next guest of honor:  For the past 25 years, Ed has been much more than a member of our instrument assembly team. He has been an important part of the journey of our post-column history, contributing to multigenerational development of our instruments and bringing his knowledge and craftsmanship to every new instrument he builds.

His experience and attention to detail have helped shape the instruments we make today—and after 25 years, he is still building them with the same dedication.  Outside of Pickering, Ed enjoys woodworking, particularly furniture building, where his same passion for craftsmanship and creating things by hand shines through.

Ed, thank you for 25 years of dedication, craftsmanship, and being an important part of the Pickering’s story. Congratulations on this incredible milestone!

Swissy Drafting Trials: Another year of Luna trying to get her title again!

By Rebecca Smith

As some of you might know, I’ve got a lot of dogs.  Well, I mean, I’ve been told four is a lot of dogs…  Of the four, three are Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs and of those, two are infamous in Pickering’s newsletter from their pandemic puppy days.  And the very first Swissy puppy to come to the lab was Luna; if you can believe it, she turned six this summer! 

My husband and I do various dog sports with all our dogs, but Luna is the only one drafting with her little cart.  She’s been doing it for a couple years now and looks very cute in her pink outfit.  And it is a good thing she’s cute, because we’ve managed to “flunk” our Novice Drafting Dog test every year so far!  But it’s about the journey and not the destination. 😊

Earlier this year, we joined the Golden State Greater Swiss Mountain Dog Club in normally beautiful Napa Valley for our latest attempt at our novice drafting title.  We enjoyed getting completely drenched on a spring weekend full of rain, puddles, and petulance.  Luna is not a big fan of the rain (California girl?) and honestly, neither was I after a couple days camping!

As part of the weekend, the club threw a Saturday afternoon carnival which was fun for the whole campground… or would have been, if the rain hadn’t kicked back up as soon as we were set up to play our games!  We still had fun, huddling under awnings and eating soggy hotdogs, but the highlight of the carnival were our carnival games illustrations! 

A gigantic shout-out to Pickering employee Yuliana Lopez, our amazing Artist in Residence, for her support for the club’s big weekend!!  The Pickering team here was able to watch in the weeks leading up to the carnival as Yuli hand illustrated signage for the various carnival games – the GSGSMD club fundraiser – and her artwork was a HUGE success! 

Everyone loved them and the club snatched them right up for future events!  And while the rain came rushing in that evening and put the carnival on pause, the displayed artwork had time to be admired even if the games themselves were only just starting to get any use!

These drafting pictures do not begin to fully illustrate our WET and RAINY experience.  Luna was once again a crowd favorite (she’s quite the clown for an audience) but she didn’t appreciate the rain making her harness all wet (nor the grass she was supposed to sit on). 

Overall, the judge said Luna did much better than last year… but she still hasn’t quite put it all together for a passing run to earn her drafting title.  There’s always next time!  In fact, she’s going to give it another shot in October in Boise, ID for Swissy Nationals.  It should be a fun time and if you’re in the area and looking for entertainment, we’d love to see you.

Pickering Laboratories is excited to introduce the newest member of our team: Anthony!

Anthony recently joined Pickering as a Quality Control Chemist and Field Service Technician. In his QC role, he helps ensure that our reagents, buffers, columns, and post-column instruments are in excellent condition before reaching our customers. As he gains experience with Pickering systems, Anthony will also travel to customer locations to assist with field service and maintenance.

A first-generation college graduate from San Jose State University, Anthony was eager to begin working in a laboratory after graduation. Before joining Pickering, he worked in a pharmacy and gained laboratory experience through his studies, including Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry. He was also drawn to the family-like work environment he experienced during his interview at Pickering.

Anthony especially enjoys seeing concepts he learned in school come to life in the laboratory and is looking forward to expanding his knowledge through hands-on experience.

Anthony’s parents came to the United States from El Salvador, which he recently visited as a graduation gift to himself. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his family, listening to music, watching movies and TV, playing games, and traveling. His travels have already taken him to Mexico, El Salvador, Colorado, Illinois, and beyond, so field service should be a great fit!

We’re excited to have Anthony on the Pickering team and look forward to seeing him grow in both the lab and the field.

Welcome to the team, Anthony!

By: Kevin McKeown

What would a Pickering Labs newsletter be without an article about our favorite new Post-Column application: Paralytic Shellfish Testing!

Coming off of our Summer exhibition season, there was a lot of talk about Shellfish at AOAC International.  We had conversations with customers from NOAA, multiple State Departments of Health and even a few third-party testing labs; all involving the rapidly accelerating need for more robust testing of Shellfish.  As the oceans/lakes/rivers get warmer, the likelihood of Algae Blooms increases dramatically.  This makes the frequent testing of potentially tainted Shellfish even more important to public health. 

If you haven’t visited in a while, we’ve updated our landing page for PSP here: https://www.pickeringlabs.com/products/paralytic-shellfish-methods/

The page features our updated Method Abstract, which now includes methodology for the GTX-6 toxin.  The GTX-6 toxin is less toxic than other STX and GTX toxins and is rarely detected in contaminated shellfish. However, some regulatory agencies require its identification and quantification. Under the standard AOAC 2011.02 conditions, GTX-6 coelutes with GTX-4. By

using a modified first eluent (2.75 mM heptane sulfonate, 1.4 mM phosphoric acid, adjusted to pH 5.7 with ammonium hydroxide) under STX/GTX analytical conditions, GTX-6 can be effectively separated and accurately quantified when reporting is required.

Myself and Dr. Maria Ofitserova will be attending/exhibiting at the HABS 2026 conference in late October in Iowa.  If you have any interest in this testing (or are already attending!) we encourage you to stop by the booth and have a look at our Onyx!

Spoofing Emails

By: Kevin McKeown

It has come to our attention that some of our Dealers have been the target of an email “spoofing” campaign.  These unknown, would-be criminals will poorly impersonate a Pickering Labs employee and may even have a pickeringlabs.com email address.  The email may ask for personal information, sales information or are even bold enough to ask for banking details.  Thankfully, our wonderful partners have sniffed out these bad actors and nothing has been compromised.  We want to stress that if you receive an email from an unknown Pickering Labs employee to please contact our Sales Manager, Kevin McKeown (kmckeown@pickeringlabs.com) to verify the veracity of any communication.  Unfortunately, it is best to be skeptical in these uncertain times and we appreciate any chance to interact.

Some examples are below, including using a plausible (but fake) email address and contact from a Pickering Labs employee that you do not normally converse with:

Example 1: Body of an email that is asking for permission to send something, sent by an irregular contact from Pickering Labs

“Pickering Laboratories has a new procurement partnership proposal for an upcoming international project that I believe aligns well with your teams capabilities, and I wanted to reach out to you directly to share the preliminary details.

Given our existing partnership, we would like to involve your team in this process

Please let me know if I may send the proposal details for your review.”

Example 2: Notice the “pickeringlab.com”, as opposed to the correct, “pickeringlabs.com”

By: Kevin McKeown

Summer is in the rear-view, Autumn is in the air and now what you’ve all been waiting for: the Fall 2026 edition of the Pickering Laboratories newsletter, Retention Times!

In this issue, we’ll share fun staff news and celebrations while also mixing in our usual blend of product updates from both the Post-Column and PTS/Artificial Body Fluids product lines.

First, unfortunately, we have to send out a warning about some spammers/phishers who are disparaging our President’s good name in Spoofing Emails.

Next, we’ll get the Fall Exhibition party started in PSP-HABS Conference.  This will be our second time exhibiting at this show, with the last one in 2024.  Our first attendance was VERY educational for us, so we’re looking forward to learning more about this testing community.

David Mazawa gives us an introduction to the newest Pickering Labs team member in New Employee Spotlight – Anthony Rodriguez.  Anthony joined us over the Summer in the QC Lab and is getting up to speed SUPER quickly.  Learn a little bit more about him here.

And what would a newsletter be without an article about Rebecca’s dogs (usually our highest-viewed article!)?  In Rebecca and Luna do Dog Drafting you’ll see how Rebecca and her brood turned a soggy weekend in Napa into a win-win.  Shoutout to Pickering employee Yuliana Lopez for making all the signs!

If you’ve read any of our newsletters, you know by now that Pickering has A LOT of long-tenured employees, and we enjoy nothing more than throwing parties for the “big” anniversaries.  In Gloria 35^th Anniversary and Ed 25^th Anniversary you can read some thoughtful notes from their managers and see some pictures of the parties!  Finally, at least for the articles, we have a new product spotlight for SVF.  Our Artificial Body Fluids have already been a popular product line and we are always looking to expand the range whenever we can to support the needs of our growing customer base (check back here for updates).

But wait, there’s more! We couldn’t publish a newsletter without our very popular Chromatography Quiz, so put on your thinking caps and see if you can solve the Carbamate Analysis problem in Better Late Than Never? this time. Send in your answers for a chance to win a fabulous prize!