The Column - February 2009 - (Page 5)

February 2009 www.thecolumn.eu.com The Column Peterson and Richter Rapid Sample Preparation Technique for The Extraction of Dioxins and Furans from Animal Tissue and Feed Using Pressurized Fluid Extraction Jennifer Peterson and Bruce Richter, Dionex Corp., Sunnyvale, California, USA. Introduction Dioxins such as, polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs) are a group of environmental pollutants known to be teratogens, mutagens and suspected human carcinogens. Human exposure to dioxins is mainly through the consumption of contaminated fatty foods, such as meat from animal feed. Because dioxins are lipophilic, they tend to bioaccumulate in human fatty tissue where they are not easily excreted or metabolized. Even small dioxin amounts can potentially accumulate to dangerous levels. Dioxins and other persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are subject to the Stockholm Convention, an international agreement to monitor and eliminate, where possible, all sources of dioxins. In response to the Stockholm Convention, a research project in Europe called the Dioxin Analysis in Food and Feed, Reference Methods and New Certified Reference Materials (DIFFERENCE)1 has been focused on the development of alternative methods for the analysis of dioxins in food and animal feed. DIFFERENCE was interested in finding faster sample preparation methods to increase the overall screening process because extracting dioxins from food is a time-consuming process requiring three steps: extraction, fat removal and fractionation. Contact author: E-mail: Jennifer Peterson jennifer.peterson@dionex.com DIFFERENCE investigated several different extraction methods to determine which method delivered the best recoveries, was the least time consuming and was the least expensive per sample. The project determined that pressurized fluid extraction (PFE) was an excellent method for extracting dioxins and furans from fatty samples, such as pork, beef, chicken and animal feeds. Pressurized Fluid Extraction PFE is an automated extraction technique that uses elevated temperatures and pressures to achieve extractions in very short periods of time (for example, a 10 g sample can be extracted in less than 15 minutes and less than 15 mL of solvent). There are several physicochemical reasons for conducting extractions at elevated temperatures and pressures. The use of higher temperatures increases the capacity of solvents to solubilize analytes; for example, the solubility of anthracene increases nearly 13 times as the temperature is increased from 50 to 150 °C. Another advantage is that the increased temperature results in faster diffusion rates. This means that analytes will move faster from the boundary layer near the surface of the matrix from which they are amana productions inc/Getty Images 5 http://www.thecolumn.eu.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Column - February 2009

The Column - February 2009
Contents
Rapid Sample Preparation Technique for the Extraction of Dioxins and Furans from Animal Tissue and Animal Feed Using Pressurized Fluid Extraction
News
Incognito
Market Trends and Analysis
Tips and Tricks: GPC/SEC
Multi-residue Pesticide Analysis in Foods Using Modified QuEChERS Extraction and Ion Trap GC–MSn Analysis
Quantification of Protein Phosphorylation Using Chip-based LC–MS
A New Perspective on the Challenges of Mass Spectrometry
Q&A

The Column - February 2009