AppBrief 16: Determination of Persistent Organic Pollutants Using an Automated Sample Preparation Workflow

Abstract

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are toxic chemicals that adversely affect human health and the environment around the world. They persist for long periods in the environment and can accumulate and pass from one species to the next through the food chain. To ensure the quality and safety of foods and animal feed, for example, samples are tested for a variety of contaminants like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The extraction of POPs from the samples involves tedious, time-consuming, and potentially hazardous extraction steps. Modern analytical labs are looking to automation to help increase sample throughput and ensure the safety of workers while ensuring the resulting data is of the highest quality.

In this study, we show the automated workflow for the sample preparation of POPs like PCDD/Fs, PCBs, polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). This includes the extraction of these compounds from food/feed and the environmental samples with pressurized fluid extraction, the automated multi-column clean-up using the DEXTech instrument, and the concentration of the extracts simultaneously with the D-EVA evaporator instrument.

Keywords

Sample Preparation, High Throughput Lab Automation, Dioxins, POPs, LCTech