Lung cancer is one of the main causes of death for thousands of people yearly around the world. Biomarker aldehydes, such as hexanal and heptanal, are compounds related to the development of lung cancer, which can be detected in the early stages of this disease. A methodology was proposed to determine these aldehydes in urine, with a new configuration associated with the sample preparation step. A novel strategy with a parallel-disposable pipette extraction (DPX)-cork device was used, offering a fast and affordable extraction methodology with analysis performed by high performance liquid chromatography with diode array detector. In optimization steps, multivariate and univariate designs were applied, providing the following conditions: urine sample centrifuged at 3500 rpm for 15 min, 30 µL and 6 min of dinitrophenylhydrazine impregnation, 10× urine diluted in ultrapure water, pH adjusted to 4.8, 7 extraction cycles with 1.5 min each, 30 mg of cork, 2 desorption cycles and solvent acetonitrile with 300 µL. Limits of detection were 0.13 ng mL-1 for both analytes and limits of quantification were 0.40 and 0.41 ng mL-1 for hexanal and heptanal, respectively. Intraday and interday precisions ranged from 4 to 21%. Relative recoveries ranged from 86 to 107%, assessed at three concentrations. Urine samples were analyzed, but the presence of aldehydes was not detected.

The use of a polypyrrole (PPy) is described as an efficient extraction phase for disposable pipette extraction (DPX), in a fast and ruggedized analytical method for simultaneous determination of 18 organic micro-pollutants in water using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The DPX-blank pipettes were filled with PPy, a material produced through the chemical polymerization of PPy using iron(III) chloride hexahydrate. The optimized conditions were 5 extraction cycles with 600 µL of sample, adjusted to pH 9, and desorption with 150 µL of ethyl acetate using 7 cycles with the same aliquot. The calibration curves resulted in determination coefficient (R2) higher than 0.9963, the limit of detection (LOD) ranged from 0.4 to 1.5 µg L−1, and the limit of quantification (LOQ) were from 1.4 to 5.0 µg L−1. Excellent results were obtained for repeatability (2.3 to 15%, for 5 µg L−1) and intermediate precision, varying the day of analyses (3.9 to 15.5%) and the pipette tip (3.4 to 22.4%). The analyte recovery ranged from 75.4 to 115.0% for river water, and from 74.9 to 116.2% for tap water, in three different levels of concentration. The DPX-GC-MS method with PPy was successfully applied to determine the 18 analytes in river and tap water from the cities of Joinville and Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil.

This study shows the development and application of an analytical method for the determination of bisphenol A (BPA) in aqueous samples such as tap, river and mineral water and plastic leachates, based on an extensive literature search to understand the gaps for the determination of BPA in aqueous samples. We found that most of the methods in the literature employ some chromatographic strategy, and, to a much lesser extent, non-chromatographic instrumentation. In this scenario, we show an ultraviolet spectrophotometric-based method that can be used for routine analysis. Sample preparation was conducted by means of solvent extraction followed by back-extraction into an alkaline aqueous solution (liquid-liquid-liquid microextraction) and the detection was performed by UV spectrophotometry at 294 nm. Optimization of variables affecting both extraction and back-extraction was conducted, and the optimal extraction conditions were obtained: 85 mL aqueous sample buffered at pH 10, ionic strength adjusted with NaCl to a 2 mol L-1 final concentration, extraction with 6 mL of ethyl ether for 10 min and back-extraction into 0.5 mL of 2 mol L-1 aqueous NaOH. The following quality parameters were obtained: determination coefficient (R2) > 0.999, intra and inter-day repeatability better than 7.8% and 300 enhancement factor. The method was applied in different aqueous samples with excellent recovery and precision results, and no BPA was detected in natural water, even with the excellent limit of detection (3.5 μg L-1) and limit of quantification obtained. Limitations of this method involve analysis of samples with humic acid concentrations higher than 2 mg L-1 or high concentration of phenols and/or phthalate esters.