POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITATIONS OF AN ENZYME-LINKED-IMMUNOSORBENT-ASSAYFOR THE DETECTION OF 1-NITROPYRENE IN AIR PARTICULATE MATTER

ELISAs (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays) are generally used in envi ronmental analytical chemistry for screening purposes. In this work th e applicability of a polyclonal-based l-nitropyrene-ELISA for the quan tification of the target analyte in air particulate matter was investi gated. Validation was performed using an HPLC method with fluorescence detection of the reduced form of l-nitropyrene. It was found that the immunoassay is not only sensitive for the target analyte but to a cer tain extent also for other cross-reacting molecules present in the sam ple, such as 2-nitropyrene and 2-nitrofluoranthene, which were identif ied by GC-HRMS and are considered to be products of photochemically in duced reactions of pyrene or fluoranthene, respectively. The degree of correlation between ELISA and HPLC results for collected samples of a ir particulate matter was inversely dependent on the distance between the sampling location and the source.