PubMed · 8747006
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M Fisher. 1995. Intriguing innovation.. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.951031080b
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A broad range of pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated hydrocarbons (PCHs), polynitrohydrocarbons (PNHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organochlorine (OCs) insecticides were simultaneously analyzed in spiked soil, water or plasma samples by using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Water and plasma samples containing the pollutants were extracted by a solid-phase extraction (SPE) method using florisil columns. The soil samples, fortified with the toxicants, were extracted with water, methanol or dichloromethane (DCM). The water extract was processed by the SPE method. The methanol and DCM samples were dried, dissolved in acetonitrile and subjected to the SPE extraction. The extracted samples were analyzed by GC-MS programmed to monitor selected ions. The deuterium labelled compounds were used as the internal standards. The chromatographic profile of total ions indicated complete separation of some compounds such as isophorone, naphthalene, all PCBs, most OC insecticides and PNHs; high Mr PAHs and some PCHs were partially or incompletely separated. The chromatographic profile of individual ion indicated good separation of each ion. The minimum detection limit ranged from 1 to 4 pg injected when 1 or 2 ions were monitored or from 20 to 200 pg injected when 20 ions were monitored. The SPE method that provided 60-105% recovery of pollutants from water samples, provided only 2-60% recovery from plasma samples. This may be due to the binding of pollutants to plasma proteins. Water recovered 1-30%, while methanol or DCM recovered 65-100% of the pollutants added to the soil samples. The use of internal standards corrected for the loss of pollutants from plasma or soil.
The pre-irradiation combustion (PC) of samples to liberate iodine, followed by trapping the iodine on charcoal and quantifying the element by neutron activation analysis (NAA), has been used at the National Institute of Standards and Technology for the determination of iodine in biological materials. The applicability of this technique to numerous environmental and dietary matrices is illustrated by analysis of a range of certified reference materials (CRMs) and a powdered grass material that was prepared as an in-house reference material (RM). Because of the combustion step involved, samples with low or no fat content (e.g., cereal products, selected botanical specimens, and nonfat milk powder) and inorganic materials (e.g., coal fly ash and dried sediments) are more suited for analysis by this method. In general, the results for several types of samples obtained by this method agreed with those obtained by a second radiochemical (R) NAA, as well as by a third method using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). PC-NAA is a useful technique for determining iodine in biological and environmental samples, especially for verification of iodine results obtained from other methods.
As was shown (1), analysis of human hair on the population level and mapping of large territories using hair elemental composition are promising approaches for estimation of both the environmental situation and the population health status. In (1,2) the map of Uzbekistan (sampling in 1981) was discussed. Ten years later (1991), samples from the territory in the vicinity of the drying out Aral Sea were taken again. Samples were analyzed for 24 elements using instrumental neutron activation analysis. Comparison of the data and maps drawn for 1981 and 1991 and their comparison with changes of the health status have shown that repeated mapping of territories using data on human hair elemental composition could be used in medical geography, especially for prediction of health status changes in ecologically unfavorable areas.