Automated Clean Up Methord for the Determination of PCBs and PBDEs in Fish

Organohalogen compounds such as certain organochlorinated Pesticides (OCPs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) and brominated diphenylethers (PBDEs) are toxic and persistent and have been detected in various environmental compartments. All these compounds fall under or are candidate to the Stockholm Convention and they are subject to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) monitoring programmes1. In the past, different complex automated clean-up systems have been developed and dedicated to the analysis of dioxins in environmental samples. Later these methodologies have been adapted to include other conventional or emerging persistent organic compounds such as PCBs and PBDEs2, 3, 4. These methodologies involve different types of adsorption media such as acidic silica/silica, alumina and active carbon and are useful if multiresidual analysis with PCDD/Fs analysis in a final step is applied. Often the monitoring of these chemicals do not include all these compounds, but is limited to only a few classes excluding the PCDD/Fs, so that a reduced number of clean up steps are needed and time and cost expenses reduced.. In this study we tested the flexibility of an automated clean-up system used for the multiresidual analysis5 developing a shorter and simpler automated method for the simultaneous analysis of PCBs and PBDEs in fish. For this purpose we reduced the clean up steps to GPC followed by acidic silica/silica columns. The automated clean up system (J2 Scientific, Missouri, USA) consists of a gel permeation chromatography (GPC) with autosampler (AccuPrep MPSTM), an evaporator system (AccuVapTM) and three solid phase module able to manage the acid silica/neutral silica, basic alumina and active carbon columns (Dioxin/SPE module) in-line. The system processes the samples in sequence. The system was tested with natural fish certified reference material EDF-2525.JRC.DDG.H.5-Rural, water and ecosystem resource