Development of an environmental friendly method for the analysis of organochlorine pesticides in sediments

This work proposes a pressurized hot water extraction (PHWE) followed by solid phase microextraction (SPME) and determination by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method for the analysis of organochlorine pesticides in sediment samples. For SPME, extraction temperature and time, desorption temperature and desorption time, and effect of an organic modifier were studied. For PHWE, parameters such as organic modifier, percentage of organic modifier, temperature, and static extraction time were studied. When these parameters were selected, the figures of merit were calculated in order to assess the performance of the proposed method. Quantitative recoveries (80-115%) and satisfactory precisions were obtained. The detection and quantification limits were between 0.11 and 16 mu g kg(-1) and between 0.24 and 22 mu g kg(-1), respectively with good linearity between LOQs and 500 mu g kg(-1) for most of the studied pesticides. The method was validated by the analysis of a reference marine sediment material (SRM 1944). The obtained results are in excellent agreement with the certificate material. Another sediment reference material (SRM 1941b), with a very low concentration of pesticides was also analyzed with good results. In addition, this method was successfully applied to the analysis of three marine sediment samples. The developed method seems to be a nearly full automated, environmental friendly, sensitive, simple and less-time consuming method. Moreover this method, look for the implementation of the principles of green analytical chemistry and has demonstrated to be suitable for the analysis of organochlorine pesticides at trace levels in environmental matrices as sediment samples. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.