Determination of triazine herbicides in milk by cloud point extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography

High-performance liquid chromatography with UV detection was used to detect four triazines in milk. An efficient pretreatment method known as cloud point extraction (CPE) was proposed for extracting and preconcentrating analytes. The parameters of CPE including surfactant type and concentration, electrolyte, sample pH, incubation temperature and duration were investigated. Under optimal conditions, satisfying recoveries in the range of 70.5-96.9% were achieved for four triazines. The limits of detection ranged from 6.79 to 11.19 mu g L-1. The linear range of quantitation for the four triazines was 50-2000 mu g L-1, and the correlation coefficients of the calibration curves were all 0.9999. The results demonstrated that the proposed method was efficient and reliable for the determination of triazine herbicides in milk samples. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.