Fast Screening Techniques for Neurotoxigenic Substances and Other Toxicants and Pollutants Based on Thermal Lensing and Microfluidic Chips.

Efficient environment protection and human safety require high-throughput analysis techniques for pollutants or toxicants for large sample sets. State-of-the-art HPLC and GC coupled to various detecting strategies offer excellent sensitivity and selectivity, though they are quite time-extensive (2 - 3 samples/h or less when sample preparation is involved). Efforts are made towards screening techniques with high sample throughputs simultaneously providing detection limits below the maximum contaminant levels for the analyte. However, such approaches frequently sacrifice the selectivity or sensitivity (or just give a yes/no response). In this review, we demonstrate thermal-lens spectrometry and microscopy as highly sensitive spectrometric techniques in combination with flow-injection analysis (FIA) and microfluidic FIA along with lab-on-a-chip chemistry for fast screening (several samples/h and up to 20 samples/min) exemplified by organophosphates and carbamates as neurotoxigenic compounds. Various approaches to determining other topical toxicants, like microcystin and cyanopigments as its indicators, allergens, and carcinogenic chromate, are also discussed.