Lab Adventure is back in Újpest

Applications are invited from all over the country for the super cool laboratory competition

This year, the long-running science chemistry competition and laboratory visit with interactive experiments, Lab Adventure, will be held again. The essay competiion of Eurofins, performing independent laboratory testing, aims to promote chemistry and laboratory testing among high school students. This time, the focus is on microplastics and compounds released from packaging materials, and the best essayists will be invited to open the "super-secret" door of the laboratory, where they will experience, as the Lab Adventure motto goes, that the wonder is inside.

Eurofins Analytical Services Hungary Kft., which has been present in Hungary for more than 32 years and playing an outstanding social role with its laboratory tests, will open its doors again in autumn 2024 for high school students interested in the wonders of chemistry. The program is primarily aimed at students who feel responsible for the sustainability of our environment, food safety and the circular economy, who are not opposed to chemistry and are open to learning how a modern testing laboratory works.

Why is circular economy, sustainable development, the role of packaging materials or the issue of microplastics so important?

Eurofins specialists have carried out hundreds of thousands of tests in the fields of food safety, environmental and health protection in recent decades. It became clear that we are facing countless challenges in the 21st century, the solution of which is an increasingly urgent task, and where the science of chemistry, specifically laboratory measurements, has a key role.

The issue of packaging materials is perhaps one of the most important and also the most interesting of these areas. Without these tools, modern commerce and food safety would not exist, but their widespread use also poses serious risks to our health and the environment. It is now a well-known fact that single-use food packaging causes an environmental protection problem: these materials make up the vast majority of plastic waste spilling into the oceans, but they also break down into microplastics and appear in our waters, soil, air, and enter our food and our bodies. However, perhaps fewer people know that harmful substances dissolve directly into the food from these tools, and the authorities now keep records of an extremely large number of such compounds. In the course of our lives, we consume nearly half a kilogram of harmful molecules in this way - including components called "everlasting materials".

How are these substances leached from food packaging materials? What exactly is microplastic? What happens to plastics during their life cycle? Why is circular economy and sustainable development important? How are tiny substances that enter the environment or even our food found in the laboratory? All the contestants have to do is prepare their essay using their own research and the background materials suggested by the organizers.

The first 15 students can take part in a one-day laboratory adventure at the Eurofins headquarters in Újpest: they can get a glimpse of the work that requires great expertise and a super-modern instruments, and during which even the most difficult-to-detect compounds are caught, they can perform chemical experiments and listen to no less exciting presentations on the topic, and at the end of the day they will receive a gift.

The criteria for the entries, the background materials necessary for their preparation, the conditions and dates of the application can be found on the official website of Lab Adventure, at the website Eurofinstudaskozpont.hu.