engleski

Extraction of polybrominated diphenyl ethers from human milk samples

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a class of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) widely used as flame retardants in a variety of everyday household products.[1] They easily migrate and can enter the human organism through contaminated food and inhalation/ ingestion of house dust, which are the main routes of human exposure.[2] PBDEs are lipophilic, hence, they accumulate in human milk, the most commonly used biological matrix for monitoring POP concentrations in humans.[3] Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) has a number of advantages, such as lower solvent consumption and processing time, reduced analyte loss as well as higher sample throughput, but it is applied almost exclusively for solid samples. This is the first application of MAE to human milk samples - the influence of sample preparation and pretreatment were investigated, and extraction conditions (type and volume of solvent, temperature) were optimized. PBDEs were extracted from freeze-dried milk dissolved in ultrapure water with n-hexane:acetone (1:1, v/v) and formic acid and 2-propanol as denaturing agents were added at 80 °C for 20 min. Analytical recoveries ranged from 60 to 72 %, with good repeatability (RSD 4-9 %). Undoubtedly, MAE has the potential for future use in PBDE extraction from human milk and could, under appropriate conditions, be applied in the trace analysis of other POPs from liquid samples.

PBDE ; microwave assisted extraction ; human milk

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