Advances in sample preparation in chromatography for organic environmental pollutants analyses

Many pollutants are present at trace level in our environment, which are beyond the scope of the detection by advance instruments too. Therefore, there is urgent need to develop advance sample preparation methods to determine the concentrations of the pollutants even at trace levels. Keeping this into consideration, many extraction techniques have been developed and applied for the analysis of organic pollutants in environmental samples. This review presents the sate-of-the-art of sample preparation methods in environmental samples. The extraction techniques discussed are headspace, liquid based extraction, supported liquid, homogeneous liquid–liquid, homogeneous liquid–liquid, single drop micro-extraction, membrane assisted solvent, solid-phase, molecularly imprinted solid-phase, monolithic spin column, matrix solid-phase, dispersive solid-phase, disposable pipette, magnetic solid-phase, solid-phase micro-extraction, micro-extraction by packed sorbent and stir bar sorptive. The article will be highly useful for environmental chromatographers.