Persistent organic pollutants: Overview of their extraction and estimation

Abstract

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are environmental pollutants which resist any type of chemical, photolytic or biological degradation. Due to this nature they get accumulated into the environment and often get transferred to one part of the world to other and through various sources they get inside the human body. These chemicals are very dangerous to human health and some of the POPs are so dangerous that they can cause cancer resulting in several deaths. These chemicals must be identified and analyzed so that the possible contaminant of POPs must be identified and a possible awareness must be created to limit the use of POPs and to make the environment less polluted by these POPs. This review is an attempt to collect the possible extraction methods and the analytical techniques used in the estimation of POPs from various sources. Copyright © 2012 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.