BARRY LUKE: 1939 – 2009
Student at Coburg High School 1953 to 1955 having transferred from Moreland Central School at Form 3
Member of the school football teams and the school tennis team
Adapted from the Obituary for “Chemistry in Australia” written by Graham Roberts MRACI
Graham was also a student at Coburg High School from 1960 to 1966
Australia lost one of its premier residue analysts with the passing of Barry Luke FRACI in August 2009. Barry had a distinguished career in analytical chemistry and laboratory management in the public service, private laboratories and his own environmental consultancy business.
Barry studied part-time at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), graduating with a Diploma of Applied Chemistry in 1962. During his undergraduate years he worked as a Technical Assistant at Commonwealth Fertilisers and Chemicals, Robert Bryce & Co. (electroplating chemicals) and the Commonwealth Customs Laboratory in Melbourne. He also completed three months National Service during this period.
Barry’s professional career began in the Tariff Section of the Customs and Excise Laboratory, (subsequently AGAL and now part of NMI), where he advanced to Senior Tariff Chemist and was responsible for the development of many analytical methods to determine the tariff classification of materials based on their chemical composition. Several of these innovative methods were published in peer–reviewed journals.
Barry will best be remembered for his outstanding work concerning organic residues and contaminants in foods and the environment. He entered this field in 1975 in the Pesticides Section, Customs Laboratory. He led the Section for three years before he was appointed Manager, Organic Chemistry Branch, State Chemistry Laboratory in 1984. His involvement in residue analysis continued when he left the Public Service in 1987 to take on the role of Manager, Analytical Reference Laboratories (ARL) where he was responsible for establishing a nation-wide laboratory network to monitor pesticide residues in meat fat. This period of Barry’s career was marked by a number of significant achievements that led to his well-deserved national and international reputation as an expert residue chemist.
With Colin Dahl (FRACI, deceased) he identified two previously unreported metabolites of organophosphate insecticides in beef fat. This led to changes in the monitoring programs to protect Australia’s export meat markets.
Following on from work initiated by the Board of Tick Control Laboratories in NSW using ‘home made’ apparatus, Barry championed the Sweep Co-Distillation (SCD) technique for the extraction and clean-up of pesticide residues from animal fats. After refining and improving the technique, Barry approached Scientific Glass Engineering P/L (SGE) to produce a compact, efficient commercial apparatus, known as the UnitrexTM. In 1984, together with Ern Dawes, founder of SGE and Jeff Richards (MRACI), Barry published two papers to introduce the UnitrexTM and its analytical capabilities to the scientific community. Since then, the apparatus has been marketed world-wide and is still used by laboratories in Australia, USA and Asia. Australia’s beef industry owes a debt of gratitude to Barry and his co-workers. Without the UnitrexTM, Australia would have been hard-pressed to conduct the level of surveillance monitoring required to maintain beef exports during the dieldrin crisis in 1987/88.
Barry’s expertise in SCD was recognised by his appointment as an AOAC Associate Referee and his invitation to join an Australian delegation to allay the concerns of US government officials during the dieldrin crisis. His broad knowledge of residue analyses saw him represent the RACI on the National Residue Survey’s Laboratory Performance Evaluation Committee.
Barry initiated a study of pesticide and PCB residues in the breast milk of nursing mothers in Victoria. The unexpected detection of organophosphate insecticide residues in isolated samples led to the discovery that many lanolin-based skin creams used by mothers to protect their nipples while breastfeeding were heavily contaminated with these pesticides. After this became known, manufacturing processes were changed to significantly reduce the exposure of nursing mothers and their infants to these highly toxic compounds.
Following on from this work, Barry served as an Honorary Adviser to the Australian Breastfeeding Association for a number of years until February 2009.
Barry’s other research interests included studies on pesticide residues in flora and fauna from the Great Barrier Reef and Antarctic bird eggs. He was also one of the first Australian chemists to raise environmental concerns over triclosan, a compound found in many ‘anti-bacterial’ toiletries.
Once he became involved in residue analyses, Barry was a prime mover in the development of the Australian Conference of Residue Chemists. Between 1981 and 1997, he was the convener/chairperson of three conferences and a member of the organising committee for another. As a person always pleased to share his experience and knowledge with others, Barry had an immense impact on these conferences for over 30 years. His significant contributions were formally recognized at 22CRC in November 2009.
After his work at ARL, Barry worked for a short time for the Victorian EPA before joining Dames and Moore Engineering Consultants where he supervised laboratories servicing the Bayside Project. He then worked as Principal Environmental Consultant, National Analytical Laboratories for three years until 1992 when he formed his own environmental consultancy, Barry Luke and Associates, which he operated very successfully until his retirement in 2005. Post-retirement, he maintained an active interest in the Conference of Residue Chemists and issues related to organic residues and contaminants.
Barry was awarded his M Appl. Sci. degree from RMIT in 1987, based on publications. He was a member of the RACI for 44 years and elected a Fellow of the Institute in 1989.
Perhaps Barry’s greatest legacy to his profession rests with the many chemists he supervised or mentored and who subsequently forged successful careers to become nationally recognized experts in their fields. Those that worked under his guidance could not help but appreciate the importance of professional ethics, diligence, an open and enquiring mind, attention to detail and analytical quality assurance.
Adapted from the Obituary for “Chemistry in Australia” written by Graham Roberts MRACI
Graham was a student at Coburg High School from 1960 to 1966