Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi! We're exploring chemical additives that preserve meat and fish. I learned that Carbon Monoxide is used to make meat look fresh. Is there a simple way to detect the presence of CO in meat? Many thanks!

Hello and welcome to Scibuddies. I can help you with your question about CO in food. Actually, the first thing you need to know is that carbon monoxide is very reactive with hemoglobin (Hb), the protein that makes red meat red. CO binds to the same site on Hb that oxygen binds to but about 200 times tighter. That's how people die from CO inhalation--their hemoglobin becomes tied up with CO and can no longer carry enough oxygen to supply the brain.

If meat is exposed to CO gas, the CO will react with Hb causing it to become bright red and stay that way. This makes meat appear fresher than it is. Now, your question was how can you measure the CO in meat, and I think the way this would be done is the same way that a diagnostic lab would measure it in human blood--as carboxyHb. There would be very little if any free CO because it would all have reacted with Hb. I did a search to see if there was any way you could measure CO-Hb at home but didn't find one. Here are some sites you can look at for more info:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/ne ... hemoglobin
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16126621
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsq-zyrzXxE

Sybee

Hi Sybee,

Wow, this is great information! Many thanks for taking the time to assemble it and educate us. We'll study the suggested sites but can't thank you enough for your direction. -rich.

Hi Rich,

I am glad my answers were useful to you. If you need more help let me know. You have good ideas but as you are finding out it is not always easy to test your ideas without a lot of expensive equipment and chemicals. That's why science costs so much to do. But if you are creative, you can find exciting things to study with a limited budget. Just be sure to make the project one that involves a hypothesis and experiments and statistics--otherwise it is just a demonstration.

Good luck!

Sybee