Determination of Polar Aromatic Amines by SPME

The described method offers the routine screening for a large number of pesticides in herbs, spikes and similar products using a quick and fast sample preparation with a relatively short total analysis time of 28 min. This method can be utilized for detection and confirmation of trace amoimts of pesticides in difficult matrices such as herbal churnas or traditional medicine preparations. 

A good linearity, specificity, recovery and repeatability of the method were established with minimal sample preparation time. GC-MS/MS as detec-tion method provided a very high selectivity for the sensitive detection and quantitation of the pesticides even from samples with a high matrix load from the short sample preparation. 

Keywords nitroaromatic compounds NAC aromatic amines in situ derivatiza-tion iodination SPME drinking water EU regulation full-scan confirmation 

Aromatic amines are known to react with DNA and hence are suspected to cause a carcinogenic risk to humans. Six aromatic amines are classified as carcinogenic or probably carcinogenic by the International Agency for the 

Research of Cancer (lARC), and the source of these compounds is manifold from several industries. The major use is in the poly-urethane production with possible emissions during production, use and disposal of such materials. A significant contribution to environmental distribution is the microbial reduction of nitroaromatic compounds (NACs) of which more than 70 compounds are mass produced with more than 1000 mt per year. Until today, more than 30 aromatic amines have been identified as metabolites, also deriving from applied pesticides. 

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