Study of polychlorinated biphenyls in street dust by supercritical fluid extraction-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry

Abstract

Street dust samples have been collected from highways, urban streets, a gasoline station, a pedestrian tunnel, and railway stations in some German cities. Nine polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs from tri-to heptachlorobiphenyls) were quantitatively extracted by supercritical fluid extraction with CO 2 at 200 bar and 40°C and analyzed by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. The highest PCB loads (sum of the nine studied PCBs) of ca. 1 to 4 µg/g have been found in the samples from motorway A60 near Mainz, while in almost all other samples PCBs could be detected at only ca. 0.1 to 1 µg/g. At three sampling sites, a winter maximum of the PCB concentrations has been found.

Mass Spectrometry in Environmental Sciences

“…191 Koester et al compared high-resolution electron ionization (EI)-MS and low-resolution ECNI-MS for measuring dioxins and furans in air 192 and reported how wet and dry deposition contribute to the observed dioxin and furan profiles between sources and sinks. 193 Yang and Baumann used SFE-GC/MS to study PCBs in street dust in Germany, 194 and Unwin and Groves used GC/ MS to measure bis(chloromethyl)ether in air at ppb levels. 195 Methyl halides were measured in marine atmospheres using canister sampling and GC/MS.…”

Supercritical Fluid Chromatography and Extraction

“…Four independent studies reported SFE to be superior to Soxhlet for extracting PCBs from soils or ash samples (340)(341)(342)(343). Additional studies presented SFE followed by GC/MS for characterizing PCBs in street dust (344), parts-per-trillion analysis of PCBs and organochlorine pesticides in marine sediments (345), and a fractional factorial approach to optimization and modifier selection for extracting chlorinated benzenes and hexachlorocyclohexanes from soil (346). Organometallics, metal chelates, and metal ions remain an interesting environmental application of SFE, as reviewed by Ashraf-Khorassani et al (347).…”