A Comprehensive Review of Analytical Methods for Determining Persistent Organic Pollutants in Air, Soil, Water and Waste

The Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are compounds (i.e., Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons PAHs, Polychlorinated Biphenyls PCBs, Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins/ dibenzofurans PCDD/Fs, PBDDs, Polybrominated diphenyl ethers PBDEs, hexachlorocyclohexane isomers HCHs, etc.) with precise physical and chemical properties such that they remain intact for long periods. Because of their persistence, POPs bioaccumulate with potential significant impacts on human health and the environment. Since the last decades, the scientific community has felt the need to investigate such compounds at very low levels and so it has developed novel analytical protocols based on extraction and clean-up procedures followed by Gas Chromatography/High Performance Liquid Chromatography- Mass Spectrometry (GC/HPLC-MS) analysis. This review would like to focus the attention on analytical methodologies set up during the last 5 years (2012-2016): the main papers reporting significant advancements in the analytical protocols for analyzing POPs in different environmental matrices such as air, soil, water and waste, will be illustrated and discussed.