Assessment of commercially available polymeric materials for sorptive microextraction of priority and emerging nonpolar organic pollutants in environmental water samples

Blanco-Zubiaguirre, Laura; Delgado, Alejandra; Ros, Oihana; Posada-Ureta, Oscar; Vallejo, Asier; Prieto, Ailette; Olivares, Maitane; Etxebarria, Nestor

Assessment of commercially available polymeric materials for sorptive microextraction of priority and emerging nonpolar organic pollutants in environmental water samples

2014

Among the different organic pollutants, persistent organic pollutants and emerging organic contaminants (EOCs) are of particular concern due to their potentially dangerous effects on the ecosystems and on human health. In the framework of the analysis of some of these organic pollutants in water samples, sorptive extraction devices have proven to be adequate for their monitoring. The efficiency of four commercially available and low-cost polymeric materials [polypropylene, poly(ethylene terephthalate), Raffia, and polyethersulfone (PES)] for the simultaneous extraction of 16 organic compounds from five different families from environmental water samples was evaluated in this work. Firstly, the homogeneity of the sorbent materials was confirmed by means of Raman spectroscopy. After the optimization of the parameters affecting the extraction and the liquid desorption steps, it was found that PES showed the largest efficiencies for slightly polar analytes and, to a lesser extent, for nonpolar analytes. Additionally, Raffia rendered good extraction efficiencies for nonpolar compounds. Thus sorptive extraction methods followed by large volume injection-programmable temperature vaporizer-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry were validated using PES and Raffia as sorbent materials. The validation of the method provided good linearity (0.978 < r ² < 0.999 for PES and 0.977 < r ² < 0.999 for Raffia), adequate repeatability (below 19 % and 14 % for PES and Raffia, respectively), and low method detection limits (low ng · l⁻¹ level). Finally, these materials were applied to the analysis of contaminants in environmental water samples.

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