Remote sampling of persistent organic pollutants by a home-made thin film device

Abstract

Fast and accurate determination of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) plays a crucial role in addressing concerns related to public security and environmental safety. Herein, a unique thin film based solid phase microextraction (denoted as TF-SPME) method was reported and used for on-site analysis of POPs via loading the TFs into a homemade sampling device and equipped on a drone, which can load up to 6 pieces of TFs at the same time. The parallel 6 pieces of TFs offered significant advantages in terms of efficiency, accuracy, cost-effectiveness and comparability of sampling. The detection limit for polychlorinated biphenyls and polyaromatic hydrocarbons was as low as 0.03 ng L^-1, far below the regulatory thresholds for drinking water prescribed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency. The standard deviations were ranged between 2.7% and 9.9%, showcasing its remarkable precision on POPs analysis. Then, by facilely equipping TF-SPME on a drone, remotely controlled sampling and on-site analysis in real water samples was realized. The concentrations were determined to be from 0.12 ng L^-1 to 1.01 ng L^-1 for PCBs and 0.53 ng L^-1 to 19.93 ng L^-1 for PAHs in the river water of Guangzhou downtown area. This study demonstrates the possibility of practical monitoring POPs with constructing novel sampling device and hopefully expands the toolbox for remote analysis of potential chemotoxicity and biotoxicity samples.