Static subcritical water extraction with simultaneous solid-phase extraction for determining polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons on environmental solids

A rapid and very simple method for extracting polycyclic aromatic hydrocarb ons (PAHs) from soils, sediments, and air particulate matter has been devel oped by coupling static subcritical water extraction with styrene-divinylbe nzene (SDB-XC) extraction discs. Soil, water, and the SDB-XC disc are place d in a sealed extraction cell, heated to 250 degrees C for 15 to 60 min, co oled, and the PAHs recovered from the disc with acetone/methylene chloride. if the cells are mixed during heating, all PAHs with molecular weights fro m 128 to 276 are quantitatively (>90%) extracted and collected on the sorbe nt disc and are then recovered by shaking with acetone/methylene chloride. After water extraction, the sorbent discs can be stored in autosampler vial s without loss of the PAHs, thus providing a convenient method of shipping PAH extracts from field sites to the analytical laboratory. The method give s good quantitative agreement with standard Soxhlet extraction, and with ce rtified reference materials for PAH concentrations on soil, sediment (SRM 1 944), and air particulate matter (SRM 1649a). (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V . All rights reserved.