B. Gruessner et al., COMPARISON OF AN ENZYME-IMMUNOASSAY AND GAS-CHROMATOGRAPHY MASS-SPECTROMETRY FOR THE DETECTION OF ATRAZINE IN SURFACE WATERS, Environmental science & technology, 29(1), 1995, pp. 251-254
To determine the reliability of an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) for atrazi
ne, we collected water samples and analyzed them for herbicide content
by both EIA and standard gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS)
techniques. The commercially available EIA uses antibodies linked to
magnetic particles to determine sample atrazine concentrations and req
uires less than 2 h to analyze a run of 50 samples. The EIA was intern
ally consistent with variation of less than 3% between 156 duplicate s
tandards that were run to develop standard curves. For the 217 samples
examined, atrazine concentrations measured by the two analytical tech
niques were highly correlated (r = 0.96). Compared to concentrations m
easured by GC/MS, the EIA produced no false negatives and few false po
sitives (5.53%). The EIA tended to overestimate atrazine concentration
s slightly, probably the result of cross-reaction in the EIA by atrazi
ne metabolites and structurally related triazine herbicides. Even so,
the EIA proved to be a reliable, relatively simple, and cost-effective
screening technique for atrazine contamination.