Atrazine-mercapturate

E. M. Thurman and C. Batian, Determination of atrazine and atrazine mercapture in drinking water samples and in urine using immunoaffinity SPE with positive ion spray HPLC/MS , Presented at the 15th Symposium on Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry, Montreux, Switzerland, November 9-10, 1998. 

While many investigations were restricted to spiked samples only, some studies demonstrated the use of lA for surveillance of occupationally exposed individuals (e.g. for DDA, a metabohte of DDT, 2,4-D, paraquat and atrazine mercapturate) 234.235)... 

Atrazine, used as a selective pre- and post-emergence herbicide to control annual weeds in several crops, is the most representative compound of this group. It is also used as a non-selective herbicide in non-crop areas. After absorption, the compound is metabolized to dealkylated and deisopropy-lated derivatives. The unchanged compound and its metabolites are excreted in urine, where they can be detected by chromatography or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Lucas et al., 1993). A mercapturic acid conjugate of atrazine has also been found in urine samples of workers spraying this herbicide (Lucas et al., 1993) (Table 6). 

Mercapturates are proving to be very useful phase II reaction products for measuring exposure to xenobiotics, especially because of the sensitive determination of these substances by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation, and fluorescence detection of their o-phthaldialdehyde derivatives. In addition to toluene, the xenobiotics for which mercapturates may be monitored include styrene, structurally similar to toluene acrylonitrile allyl chloride atrazine butadiene and epichlorohydrin. 

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