Determination of selected polychlorinated biphenyls in soil and earthworm (Eisenia fetida) using a QuEChERS-based method and gas chromatography with tandem MS

Soil and earthworms are important objects in soil pollution assessment and environmental behavior and toxicity study for polychlorinated biphenyls. Accelerated solvent extraction and solid-phase extraction are generally required for the extraction and clean-up of polychlorinated biphenyls in soil and earthworm, which are tedious and time-consuming. In this work, a modified QuEChERS (quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe) procedure combined with gas chromatography and triple quadrupole mass spectrometry was developed for the determination of 20 selected polychlorinated biphenyl congeners in soil and earthworm. Different extraction times, solvents, and clean-up adsorbents were compared and optimized. The average recoveries from spiked soils ranged between 70 and 120% with satisfactory relative standard deviations for all the polychlorinated biphenyls. In earthworm, the recoveries of polychlorinated biphenyls 180, 183, and 189 were relatively low (<70% in some spiking levels) compared to that of the other polychlorinated biphenyls. The limits of quantification were in the range of 0.01-0.05 ng/g. The method was successfully applied to the analysis of 66 agricultural soils. To our knowledge, a combined method based on QuEChERS for the determination of polychlorinated biphenyls in soil and earthworms has not been published before. The procedure proved to be simple, sensitive, efficient, and environmentally friendly.