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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2016

Abstract

Nonylphenols (NP) are a group of alkylphenols, formed upon degradation of nonylphenol ethoxylates such as nonylphenol monoethoxylate (NP1EO) or nonylphenol diethoxylate (NP2EO), which have been broadly used as non-ionic surfactants. Both NP and their ethoxylates are often present in the sewage, despite being banned and substituted by less toxic alcohol ethoxylates in many countries. There is a number of degradation studies of nonylphenol in the soil environment, but there is a lack of understanding on how plants and soil organisms such as earthworms can affect the degradation. In our study, we investigated the degradation of 4-nonylphenol (4-NP) in a mineral field soil in the presence of barley (Hordeum vulgare) and earthworms (Aporrectodea caliginosa). Soil was spiked with 4-NP at a concentration of 12.5 mg kg-1 d.w. soil. Results showed that the degradation of 4-NP in soil was rapid during the 28 days after spiking, with remaining concentration of 0.397 mg kg-1 d.w. soil on day 28. Degradation was much slower between days 28 and 120, with a remaining concentration of 0.214 mg kg-1 d.w. soil on day 120. No significant difference in the degradation of 4-NP in the presence of either plants or worms was observed, but sampling after 28 days of exposure revealed transfer of 4-NP to worms (worm tissue concentration = 0.79 μg g-1), which increased with time (1.66 μg g-1 after 120 d). The calculated transfer factor after 28 (TF28) and 120 days (TF120) was 0.07 and 0.13 respectively. No toxicity or accumulation in plants was observed at the concentration tested herein. Concentration of 4-NP in the rhizosphere was not statistically different from that in the bulk soil.

2015

To document

Abstract

This paper investigated the possibility of leaving out the traditional clean-up step in the QuEChERS procedure and analysing non-cleaned extracts from fruit, vegetables and cereals with a combination of gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS), back-flush technology and large-volume injection. By using calibration standards in cucumber matrix, recovery and precision were calculated in lettuce, orange and wheat for 109 pesticides at 0.01 and 0.1 mg kg−1 in two sets of samples: one with and one without clean-up. For both spiking levels, 80–82% of the pesticides in the non-cleaned extracts and 80–84% of the pesticides in the cleaned extracts were within the acceptable recovery range of 70–120%. Precision data for both levels showed that 95% of the pesticides in the non-cleaned extracts and 93–95% of the pesticides in the cleaned extracts had RSDs below 20%. Recovery and precision data were determined using a two tailed t-test (p = 0.05). By using calibration standards in the respective matrix, we studied if the non-cleaned calibration standards gave an extra matrix effect compared with the cleaned standards by using the slope from calibration graphs and plotting the calculated extra matrix effect minus 100 for each compound. The results showed that for 79% of the pesticides, the extra matrix effect minus 100 was within the acceptable range of −20% to 20%. Five European Union proficiency tests on rye, mandarin, rice, pear and barley, respectively, from 2010 to 2012 were reanalysed omitting the clean-up step and showed satisfactory results. At least 70 injections of non-cleaned extracts were made without detecting any increased need for maintenance during the experimental period. Analysing non-cleaned QuEChERS extracts of lettuce, orange and wheat are possible under the conditions described in this paper because recovery, precision and specificity showed satisfactory results compared with samples subjected to traditional dispersive clean-up.