Copper (Cu) as a Possible Inhibitor from the Interferences of Sulphur during Analysis of Organochlorines

Abstract

In chemical and environmental analyses, there are interferences that could affect the qualitative and quantitative results of such analyses. A typical example is the analysis of Organochlorinesin soil that can contain anaerobic sulphur in considerable quantity. Sulphur is highly responsive to Electron Capture Detector (ECD) which in turn represents such interferences as massive peaks in spectra. In this work, Cu was introduced into different organochlorines(OCs) pesticides standards with different concentrations (50 ng, 100 ng and 150 ng) in order to remove the sulphur component. The results showed that the introduction of Cu into the analytes circumvented the effect of the sulphur on the samples with almost 100% recovery of the samples after the analyses. However, only a few of the OCsp,p-DDT and methoxychlor gave lower percentage recovery of 47 and 50% respectively for the 100 ng samples. The data obtained shows that the use of copper fillings / cuttings for pre-analytical sample treatment for alltwenty-six OCs tested with exception of two compounds showed acceptable recovery levels of >80%.