LCGC The Peak - April 2008 - (Page 21)

APRIL 2008 THE PEAK 21 Absorbance (363nm) 2 1 3 expensive and is not available in a lot of labs for routine analysis, particularly in developing countries. Environmental Impact 0 2 Time (min) 4 6 Figure 1: Chromatograms obtained from HPLC analyses of a prawn sample spiked with 0.4 g/g of each compound (solid line) and a blank prawn sample (dashed line). Peaks: 1 OTC (retention time, Rt, 1.59 min); 2 TC (Rt 2.24 min); 3 CTC (Rt 3.63 min). The EU, Japan and the US import more than 70% of the world seafood market (5) and it is essential to monitor the safety of seafood for consumers in relation to the presence of tetracyclines. The ideal method must be simple, quick, cost-effective, and cause negligible harm to the environment and the analyst. High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is now the preferred method for analysis of many substances, including TCAs of biological interest (6) HPLC interfaced with ultraviolet (UV), fluorescence (F) (8,9), photo-diode array (PDA) (10–12), and mass spectrometery (MS) detection (7,13), have been reported. MS is very The methods mentioned in references 8–13 share crucial disadvantages. They all consume organic solvents in the HPLC mobile phases and in the solutions used to extract and deproteinize the sample during the sample preparation stage. The disposal of organic solvents is a global environmental problem in terms of risk to humans and environmental impact (4–17). Incineration of waste organic solvents has increased steadily over the past 10 years but is very expensive (18,19). Reducing or, if possible, eliminating the use of organic solvents is, therefore, an important goal in terms of environmental conservation, human health, and the economy. All these techniques also involve at least one extracting/purifying step using large amounts of organic solvent, which consumes time and money if a large number of samples need to be analysed. Additionally, most of these methods did not detect OTC, CTC, and TC simultaneously. This article describes an inexpensive technique that does not use organic solvents to determine OTC, CTC, and TC in prawns. This involves a fast sample preparation technique followed by RP-HPLC interfaced with a PDA detector using 100% aqueous conditions for the mobile phase and sample preparation stage.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of LCGC The Peak - April 2008

LCGC The Peak - April 2008 Contents LC3LC: Comprehensive Two-Dimensional Liquid Chromatography Split Injections in Gas Chromatography: How to Reduce Inlet Discrimination A Simple and Solvent-Free Method for Determining Tetracyclines in Prawns Industry News Events Education

LCGC The Peak - April 2008

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