EVALUATION OF ELISA KITS FOLLOWED BY LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY ATMOSPHERIC-PRESSURE CHEMICAL-IONIZATION MASS-SPECTROMETRY FOR THE DETERMINATIONOF ORGANIC POLLUTANTS IN INDUSTRIAL EFFLUENTS

Contaminated industrial effluents often contain a variety of organic p ollutants which are difficult to analyze by standard GC-MS methods sin ce they often miss the more polar or nonvolatile of these organic comp ounds. The identification of highly polar analytes by chemical or rapi d biological techniques is needed for characterization of the effluent s. The present work will evaluate the use of enzyme linked immunosorbe nt assays (ELISA) kits for determining pentachlorophenol, carcinogenic PAHs and BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and o-, m-, and p-xyle ne) among the organic analytes present in various industrial effluents from Europe (petrochemical plant and hazardous waste). The analytical protocol applied for the evaluation of the kits was based on the use of ELISA followed by solid-phase extraction (SPE) for the preconcentra tion of a variety of organic pollutants such as pentachlorophenol, pht halates, and nonylphenol and final determination with LC-MS characteri zation using an atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) interf ace in the positive and negative ionization modes. The developed proto col permitted the unequivocal identification of target analytes such a s pentachlorophenol, nonylphenol, dibutylphthalate, dimethylphthalate, bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, 2-mettlylbenzenesulfonamide, and 2,2-dime thylbenzene-sulfonamide present in industrial effluents. The advantage s and limitations of the three RaPID-magnetic particle-based ELISA kit s applied to the characterization of industrial effluents are also rep orted.