Evaluating the blank contamination and recovery of sample pretreatment procedures for analyzing organophosphorus flame retardants in waters

作     者：Kang Liang Yumin Niu Yongguang Yin Jingfu Liu 

作者机构：State Key Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry and Ecotoxicology Research Center for Eco-Environmental SciencesChinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Environment and Health Jianghan University 

出 版 物：《Journal of Environmental Sciences》 (环境科学学报（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2015年第27卷第8期

页      面：57-62页

核心收录：

学科分类：082803[工学-农业生物环境与能源工程] 08[工学] 0828[工学-农业工程] 0804[工学-仪器科学与技术] 

基　　金：financially supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (No.2013AA065201) Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nos.XDB14020101, YSW2013A01, YSW2013B01) 

主　　题：Organophosphate esters Sample pretreatment procedure Blank contamination Recovery Water samples 

摘      要：Organophosphate esters（OPEs）, used as flame retardants and plasticizers, are widely present in environmental waters. Development of accurate determination methods for trace OPEs in water is urgent for understanding the fate and risk of this class of emerging pollutants. However, the wide use of OPEs in experimental materials results in blank interference, which influences the accuracy of analytical results. In the present work, blank contamination and recovery of pretreatment procedures for analysis of OPEs in water samples were systematically examined for the first time. Blank contaminations were observed in filtration membranes, glass bottles, solid phase extraction cartridges, and nitrogen blowing instruments. These contaminations could be as high as 6.4–64 ng/L per treatment. Different kinds of membranes were compared in terms of contamination levels left after common glassware cleaning, and a special wash procedure was proposed to eliminate the contamination from membranes. Meanwhile, adsorption of highly hydrophobic OPEs on the inside wall of glass bottles was found to be 42.4%–86.1%, which was the primary cause of low recoveries and was significantly reduced by an additional washing step with acetonitrile. This work is expected to provide guidelines for the establishment of analysis methods for OPEs in aqueous samples.