Application Note: Utilizing 100 mL sample volumes for EPA Method 608.3 automated extractions on the Biotage Horizon 5000
15 May 2023
Pesticides, including insecticides, fungicides,
and herbicides, are used extensively to increase
agricultural yield. However, these pesticides can be detrimental
to the health of humans as well as animals. It is
important to monitor organochlorine pesticides and
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) not just in drinking
water (US EPA Method 508), but also in wastewater
(US EPA Method 608.3). Some influent wastewater samples can be heavily laden with
particulates, sludge, and the like, so it may be difficult to extract
an entire liter of this sample when following US EPA Method
608.3. Fortunately, with this method, laboratories have the
option of extracting smaller sample volumes, thus reducing the
particulates that needs to be filtered out of the
sample during extraction. In this application note, Biotage provides a solution for
extracting 100 mL of 608.3 wastewater samples utilizing the
Biotage®
Horizon 5000 to automatically load the sample and
rinse the original sample container for solid phase extraction
(SPE), DryDisk®
Solvent Drying System for drying the residual
water from the extracts, and the TurboVap®
for concentrating the
dried extracts. Samples are extracted in methylene chloride,
then solvent exchanged into hexane prior to analysis by gas chromatography/electron capture detection (GC/ECD).
