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ELISA and GC-MS as Teaching Tools in the Undergraduate Environmental Analytical Chemistry Laboratory

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Ruth I. Wilson , Dan T. Mathers and Scott A. Mabury

Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3H6, Canada

Greg M. Jorgensen

Department of Environmental Toxicology, University of California, Davis, CA 95615

J. Chem. Educ., 2000, 77 (12), p 1619

DOI: 10.1021/ed077p1619

Publication Date (Web): December 1, 2000

Section:

History, Education, and Documentation

Abstract

An undergraduate experiment for the analysis of potential water pollutants is described. Students are exposed to two complementary techniques, ELISA and GC-MS, for the analysis of a water sample containing atrazine, desethylatrazine, and simazine. Atrazine was chosen as the target analyte because of its wide usage in North America and its utility for students to predict environmental degradation products. The water sample is concentrated using solid-phase extraction for GC-MS, or diluted and analyzed using a competitive ELISA test kit for atrazine. The nature of the water sample is such that students generally find that ELISA gives an artificially high value for the concentration of atrazine. Students gain an appreciation for problems associated with measuring pollutants in the aqueous environment: sensitivity, accuracy, precision, and ease of analysis. This undergraduate laboratory provides an opportunity for students to learn several new analysis and sample preparation techniques and to critically evaluate these methods in terms of when they are most useful.

Keywords (Domain):

Analytical Chemistry

Keywords (Subject):

Chromatography

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