engleski

Introductory notes on the main strategies for the wide spectrum analysis of hazardous chemical contaminants in war-affected areas of Croatia

The list of possible environmental contaminants encompasses a large number of hazardous inorganic and organic chemicals, as well as radioactive materials from the wide array of possible sources. Consequently, a complete environmental risk assessment requires simultaneous screening of a large variety of chemically different pollutants. The Croatian Ordinance on the maximum allowable concentrations from 1984 contains a comprehensive list of water quality criteria for over 100 different hazardous contaminants, including all major categories of anthropogenic chemicals from the well-known EPA list of priority pollutants. Nevertheless, many of the hazardous chemical contaminants do not belong to the common classes of priority pollutants, which are envisaged by regular monitoring protocols, using standard analytical procedures. As a consequence, the occurrence of potentially ecotoxic substances is frequently overlooked and the potential hazard, posed to the environment, widely underestimated. Considering the high complexity of chemical contamination in the war-affected areas, it is of fundamental importance to apply state-of-the-art methods, which enable a reliable analysis of complex mixtures of various environmental pollutants at low concentrations. In order to determine pollutants in complex environmental matrices, like soil and water, it is necessary to use selective and sensitive methods, providing both efficient separation of individual constituents and confirmative detection. Strategies applied for the analyses of environmental contaminants in war-affected areas of Croatia comprised development of multiresidue methods for the detection and quantitative determination of inorganic and organic pollutants in various matrices, including soils, aquatic sediments, wastewater, groundwater, surface water and estuarine water. Application of inductively coupled plasma with high resolution mass spectrometry (ICP-HR/MS) enabled a reliable screening of number of elements in all environmental samples, with inherent low limit of detection. To achieve a maximal range of the wide spectrum analysis of organic contaminants, it was essential to involve highly sensitive and selective hyphenated techniques such as high-resolution gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS-MS). The application of these analytical strategies in the project on “ Mitigation of environmental consequences of war in Croatia – risk assessment of hazardous chemical contamination” will be described.

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