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Determination of Multiple Pesticides in Human Blood Using Modified QuEChERS Method with Fe3O4 Magnetic Nanoparticles and GC–MS

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Abstract

Pesticides are often involved in numerous acute and fatal poisonings. Patients’ blood samples may be sent to a toxicological laboratory for a poisoning diagnosis. This study proposes a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) method for the determination of seven pesticides (malathion, methyl isofenphos, dichlorvos, chlorpyrifos, phenthoste, p,p′-DDD, p,p′-DDE) in human blood based on a quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe (QuEChERS) sample preparation method with Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) as the new adsorbing material. It proved that Fe3O4 MNPs have excellent adsorbent function while purifying the complex blood sample and it is simple to be separated from the extract. Under the optimum conditions, the detection limits of the proposed method for seven pesticides ranged from 0.011 to 0.163 µg mL−1. Good linearity (R value ≥0.9949) was achieved at concentration levels of 0.3–4.0 µg mL−1, and acceptable method recoveries were found in the range of 70.0–111.8% at different concentrations, with the relative standard deviations (RSD) less than 10.5%. In short, the QuEChERS method with Fe3O4 MNPs used for removing impurities improved the speed of sample pre-treatment and exhibited an enhanced performance in purifying. It can be applied for both forensic and clinical cases of accidental or suicidal poisoning with these pesticides.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81572060) and (81500129), the Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ (CSTC2013jjB10019), Application Development Plan Project of ChongQing (cstc2014yykfB10003).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Key Laboratory of Clinical Laboratory Diagnostics (Ministry of Education), College of Laboratory Medicine, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, 400016, China

      Tianxiao Yu, Teng Wang, Zhenglan Huang, Ningshu Huang, Hui Zhang, Zhenhong Luo, Hui Li, Shijia Ding & Wenli Feng

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    1. Tianxiao Yu
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    2. Teng Wang
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    3. Zhenglan Huang
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    4. Ningshu Huang
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    Correspondence to Shijia Ding or Wenli Feng.

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    This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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    T. Yu and T. Wang contributed equally to this work.

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    Yu, T., Wang, T., Huang, Z. et al. Determination of Multiple Pesticides in Human Blood Using Modified QuEChERS Method with Fe3O4 Magnetic Nanoparticles and GC–MS. Chromatographia 80, 165–170 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10337-016-3206-x

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