ABSTRACT
The field of environmental analysis has grown rapidly in recent years, thus becoming an important area of analytical science involving innovative developments of new analytical techniques to identify and quantify trace pollutants in the environment. It may be noted that like any other scientific field environmental analysis relies heavily on instrumentation and in this regard its approach essentially has remained the same as to the conventional macro, and semi-micro chemical analysis. Organic pollutants are primarily determined by gas chromatography (GC), GC/mass spectrometry (MS), and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), methods. These techniques, however, are not adequate to measure several classes of the so-called emerging pollutants. One of the key steps in all environmental analyses involves sample preparation. Be it an aqueous or a solid matrix, for organic analyses the pollutants usually need to be extracted into an appropriate solvent with greater solubility and also immiscible in water.
