Simple extraction methods for pesticide compound-specific isotope analysis from environmental samples

International audienceCompound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) is a powerful approach to track the fate of organic pollutants in the environment. However, the application of CSIA to micropollutants, such as pesticides, remains limited because appropriate extraction methods are currently lacking. Such methods should address a wide range of pesticides and environmental matrices and allow recovering sufficient mass for reliable CSIA without inducing stable isotope fractionation. Here, we present simple extraction methods for carbon (13 C/ 12 C) and nitrogen (15 N/ 14 N) CSIA for different environmental matrices and six commonly used herbicides, i.e., atrazine, terbutryn, acetochlor, alachlor, butachlor, and S-metolachlor, and three fungicides, i.e., dimethomorph, tebuconazole, and metalaxyl. We examined the potential of several extraction methods for four types of soils or sediments, three types of environmental waters and aerial and root plant samples for multielement (ME)-CSIA