Activities and Events
30 April 2015
Hubert Marceau, M. Sc., chimiste PhytoChemia is proud to present the cannabinoids family (in the convenient form of a poster that you can put on your wall). This magnificient work of art was made in collaboration with Marianne Parent from Pixel M Design. This poster is a curated list of the structures of all known cannabinoids
Activities and Events
27 April 2015
Laurie Caron, Chemist, M. Sc. – News and events Recently, Laboratoire PhytoChemia has received its license for the analysis of medical cannabis from Health Canada. We offer to producers scientific consulting and third party analytical services. We offer HPLC and GC determination for cannabinoids (THC/CBD and their acidic form), quantification of heavy metals, pesticides, bacterial
Popularization
20 April 2015
Laurie Caron, chemist, M.Sc. – Popularization In the last few weeks, I saw many discussions on LinkedIn/Facebook groups about aromatherapy. Some people seem to be highly concerned by this subject and they want to know how to use essential oils safely. So, I asked myself what was my knowledge about this topic? First of all,
Popularization
15 March 2015
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste – Popularization We have previously seen a worked example of essential oil analysis. Hydrosols can be analysed in about just the same way as essential oils. Yet, there is one huge difference between a pure essential oil and an hydrosol: the latter is always a solution. This implies some specific
Discoveries
26 February 2015
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste – Discoveries Who’s affraid of goats, sheeps, horses and cows? Most Humans are not, since these animals are rather pacific and useful to us. But herbaceous plants and shrubs have plenty of reasons to hold great resentment toward these species, who consistently eat them. So what does a plant do
Discoveries
18 February 2015
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste – Discoveries Climate can be rough around here, in Saguenay. With temperatures regularly dropping under -25ºC, February is way colder than the average, this year. Fingers get nimble very quickly, and the tip of your nose can freeze within minutes. Although this might not be comfortable every day for us, Humans,
Popularization
14 February 2015
Alexis St-Gelais, M. Sc., chimiste – Popularization Any business in the field of natural substances production (encompassing health products, extracts, refined phytochemicals, herbs, essential oils, and anything comprising one of these ingredients) will eventually have to take a stand about the kind of quality control that should be performed on its products. In many cases,
Popularization
9 January 2015
Laurie Caron – Popularization In recent months, a particular topic emerged in the media: food fraud. But what is it? By definition, there is food fraud when food is marketed with intentional misleading information to the consumer1. An example of a rather eloquent fraud, nicknamed “Horsegate“, took place in 2013 in Europe. Frozen meals
Plant card
Laurie Caron, chemist, M.Sc. – Plant card Latin name: Gaultheria hispidula (L.) Mühl. and its former name is Chiogenes hispidula (L.) T. & G. Common Names: Small tea, small tea woods, wintergreen insipid, tasteless chiogène, Snowberry. Qualified as a small creeping shrub of the heath family, this plant has long spindly branches and small oval
Popularization
9 November 2014
Alexis St-Gelais – Popularization One of the strangest aspects of the life of a chemist is to constantly be working with something we can (almost) never see as a unit: a molecule. In fact, a considerable part of our job is to draw conclusions from data obtained indirectly in order to deduce the structure of