Although environmental monitoring of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) is an essential step to prevent human exposure to contaminated sites, it provides little information on the actual human uptake and subsequent risks. To this end, urine analysis of short-term biomarkers such as PAH metabolites fill an important niche. The general approach follows the sequence of urine hydrolysis, sample clean-up and pre-concentration, chromatographic separation and determination. Whereas chromatographic methods are based on well established laboratory techniques, the development of easy-to-use, cost-effective and large sample throughput techniques is becoming increasingly relevant to investigate adverse PAH effects on large human populations. This thesis compares the room-temperature, 77K and 4.2K fluorescence properties of 1-naphthol, 2-naphthol, 1-hydroxypyrene, 2-hydroxyfluorene, 3-hydroxybenzopyrene and 9-hydroxyphenanthrene. These metabolites are used as model biomarkers to investigate the analytical potential of a simple method of analysis based on Solid-Phase Extraction and Room-Temperature Fluorimetry. Metabolites are directly determined in the eluting solvent (methanol) without the need of previous separation via multidimensional formats. Metabolite recoveries varied between 87 ± 1.51% (9-hydroxyphenanthrene) and 99 ± 1.05% (3-hydroxybenzopyrene). For 10mL of urine samples, limits of detection varied between 0.01ng.mL-1 (3-hydroxybenzopyrene) and 0.6ng.mL-1 (2-hydroxynaphthalene). These figures of merit demonstrate the potential of this approach for screening purposes
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:etd-4392 |
| Date | 01 January 2007 |
| Creators | Vatsavai, Keerthika |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
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