Determination of polychlorinated biphenyls in fish: optimisation and validation of a method based on accelerated solvent extraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

A simple and robust method for the determination of 18 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in fish was developed and validated. A mixture of acetone/n-hexane (1:1, v/v) was selected for accelerated solvent extraction (ASE). After the digestion of fat, the clean-up was carried out using solid phase extraction silica cartridges. Samples were analysed by GC-MS in selected ion monitoring (SIM) using three fragment ions for each congener (one quantifier and two qualifiers). PCB 155 and PCB 198 were employed as internal standards. The lowest limit of detection was observed for PCB 28 (0.4ng/g lipid weight). The accuracy of the method was verified by means of the Certified Reference Material EDF-2525 and good results in terms of linearity (R(2)>0.994) and recoveries (80-110%) were also achieved. Precision was evaluated by spiking blank samples at 4, 8 and 12ng/g. Relative standard deviation values for repeatability and reproducibility were lower than 8% and 16%, respectively. The method was applied to the determination of PCBs in 80 samples belonging to four Mediterranean fish species. The proposed procedure is particularly effective because it provides good recoveries with lowered extraction time and solvent consumption; in fact, the total time of extraction is about 12min per sample and, for the clean-up step, a total solvent volume of 13ml is required.