Determination of currently used pesticides in biota

Abstract

23 páginas, 3 figuras, 5 tablas.Although pesticides enable control of the quantity and quality of farm products and food, and help to limit diseases in humans transmitted by insects and rodents, they are regarded as among the most dangerous environmental contaminants because of their tendency to bioaccumulate, and their mobility and longterm effects on living organisms. In the past decade, more analytical methods for accurate identification and quantitative determination of traces of pesticides in biota have been developed to improve our understanding of their risk to ecosystems and humans. Because sample preparation is often the rate-determining step in analysis of pesticides in biological samples, this review first discusses extraction and clean-up procedures, after a brief introduction to the classes, and the methods used in the analysis of pesticides in biota. The analytical methods, especially chromatographic techniques and immunoassay-based methods, are reviewed in detail, and their corresponding advantages, limitations, applications, and prospects are also discussed. This review mainly covers reports published since 2008 on methods for analysis of currently used pesticides in biota.This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Innovation through the project Consolider-Ingenio 2010 "Assessing and predicting effects on water quantity and quality in Iberian rivers caused by global change" (CSD2009-00065) and the project of I + R + I "Recovering curiosity in environmental science: A global approximation of the environmental forensics applied to the Turia River Basin" (CGL2011-29703-C02-01 and CGL2011-29703-C02-02).Peer reviewe