Physical Chemistry 2008 - Workshop: Specific Methods for Food Safety and Quality - IL B1. APPLICATION OF ADVANCED OXIDATION METHODS IN COMBINATION WITH BIOANALYTICAL TECHNIQUES FOR EVALUATION OF PESTICIDE REMOVAL FROM WATERS

Laboratory for Environmental Research, University of Nova Gorica, P.O.Box 301, 5000 Nova Gorica, Slovenia

Due to their mode and extent of application insecticides pose a serious threat to the environment and humans. This is why the insecticides are extensively applied groups of chemicals and are subject to several residue monitoring programs. Organophosphorous compounds (OP) were more than fifty years applied in crop, fruit and vegetable production as well as in veterinary more than fifty years. Because of this, they appear so frequently (within first three positions) on the top lists of pesticide residues monitoring in European and American programs. This work deals with the application of several different AOMs for the removal of insecticides. The photodegradation processes were evaluated not only in terms of kinetics, but also product identification (GC-MS, HPLC-DAD, HPLC-MS) and the degree of mineralization is compared. The research in the field of insecticide degradation was, in addition, combined with the development of analytical methods and tools for the determination of trace amounts of pesticide residues in different environmental samples. Very low concentration of OPs (malathion, diazinon, chlorpyrifos, azinphos-methyl) were determined by coupling chromatographic techniques and flow injection bioanalytical techniques to a very sensitive detector system based on thermal lens spectrometry (TLS). The achieved LODs for OPs are well below 50 ppb, which is approx. 10-times lower than maximal residue limits (MRLs) set in EU and USA legislation. Beside already mentioned classical analytical techniques, the newly developed analytical techniques were also applied in the degradation studies of selected pesticides.