Liquid-phase microextraction pretreatment techniques for analysis of chemical warfare agents and their degradation byproducts in environmental aqueous samples

Abstract

International interests in chemical warfare agents (CWAs) have been increased recently because of the use of sarin (GB) in Syrian civil war which caused around 1,300 casualties in 2013. After exposing to natural environments, CWAs undergo hydrolysis or photodegrade to non-toxic degradation byproducts. Generally, CWAs and their degradation byproducts are present at very low concentration (e.g. several ppb), thus pretreatment processes including separation, extraction and concentration are required prior to any analyses. Liquid-liquid extraction and solid-phase extraction (SPE) are common techniques to pretreat environmental samples. Recently, a novel pretreatment method, liquid phase miecoextraction (LPME), has been applied to CWAs analysis, which could reduce amounts of solvent used but promote analytical efficiencies. Fundamental backgrounds of LPME and its application to CWAs analysis were reviewed.