An Evidence for Nitrophenols Contamination in Antarctic Fresh-Water and Snow. Simultaneous Determination of Nitrophenols and Nitroarenes at ng/L Levels

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Abstract
A selective method for simultaneous extraction and analysis of nitroarenes and nitrophenols at ng/L levels from water samples is presented. Discontinue Liquid-Liquid extractions followed by a pre-concentration step (Enrichment Factor=1000) were performed to separate and extract sixteen nitrophenols (NP) and nitroarenes (NA) from aqueous matrices, before a RP-HPLC and a FID-HRGC analyses, respectively. Limits of detection were from 5 to 30 ng/L for NP and from 0.1 to 1μg/L for NA. The procedure was employed to investigate the supposed presence of predicted analytes in Antarctic water samples (lake water and snow) collected during the last Italian expeditions of Antarctica Research National Project (PNRA). An evidence for 4-nitrophenol and 2-nitrophenol trace levels pollution, carried out by this method, was confirmed by LC-DAD-MS analysis. Some hypotheses concerning the sources of such a contamination are discussed.

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