Measurements for assessing environmental exposures to children using smallamounts of serum and urine: state-of-the-art

This paper addresses the recent advances in gas chromatographic (GC)-based instrumentation for the analytical determination of environmental toxicants using small samples. One-dimensional GC/time-of-flight mass spectrometry ( TOFMS) and comprehensive two-dimensional GC (GCxGC) are shown to drasticall y improve sample component resolution, sensitivity and overall analytical t hroughput. A presentation of the concepts behind the new state-of-the-art, and results highlighting the advantages of the emerging technologies are pr esented.