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Improvement of an efficient separation method for chemicals in diesel exhaust particles: analysis for nitrophenols

  • AREA 6 • ENVIRON ANALYSES, MONITORING, HEALTH • RESEARCH ARTICLE
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Abstract

Goal, scope, and background

Diesel exhaust is believed to consist of thousands of organic constituents and is a major cause of urban pollution. We recently reported that a systematic separation procedure involving successive solvent extractions, followed by repeated column chromatography, resulted in the isolation of vasodilatory active nitrophenols. These findings indicated that the estimation of the amount of nitrophenols in the environment is important to evaluate their effect on human health. The isolation procedure, however, involved successive solvent extractions followed by tedious, repeated chromatography, resulting in poor fractionation and in a significant loss of accuracy and reliability. Therefore, it was crucial to develop an alternative, efficient, and reliable analytical method. Here, we describe a facile and efficient acid-base extraction procedure for the analysis of nitrophenols.

Materials and methods

Diesel exhaust particles (DEP) were collected from the exhaust of a 4JB1-type engine (ISUZU Automobile Co., Tokyo, Japan). Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) analysis was performed with a GCMS-QP2010 instrument (Shimadzu, Kyoto, Japan).

Results

A solution of DEP in 1-butanol was extracted with aqueous NaOH to afford a nitrophenol-rich oily extract. The resulting oil was methylated with trimethylsilyldiazomethane and subsequently subjected to GC–MS analysis, revealing that 4-nitrophenol, 3-methyl-4-nitrophenol, 2-methyl-4-nitrophenol, and 4-nitro-3-phenylphenol were present in significantly higher concentrations than those reported previously.

Discussion

Simple acid-base extraction followed by the direct analysis of the resulting extract by GC–MS gave only broad peaks of nitrophenols with a poor detection limit, while the GC–MS analysis of the sample pretreated with (trimethylsilyl)diazomethane gave satisfactorily clear chromatograms with sharp peaks and with a significantly lowered detection limit (0.5 ng/ml, approximately 100 times).

Conclusion

The present method involving an acid-base extraction, in situ derivatization, and GC–MS analysis has shown to be a simple, efficient, and reliable method for the isolation and identification of the chemical substances in DEP.

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Acknowledgement

This study was supported in part by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Basic Research C-17510052).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Central Institute of Isotope Science, Graduate School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 060-0815, Japan

    Yoichi Noya & Koh-ichi Seki

  2. Department of Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Health Sciences University of Hokkaido, Tobetsu, Ishikari, 061-0293, Japan

    Yusuke Mikami, Yoki Mori & Kazue Ohkura

  3. Environmental Nanotoxicology Section, Research Center for Environmental Risk, National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, 305-8506, Japan

    Shinji Taneda & Akira K. Suzuki

  4. Department of Pharmacology, Kobe Pharmaceutical University, Kobe, 658-8558, Japan

    Kouya Yamaki & Shin Yoshino

Authors
  1. Yoichi Noya
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  2. Yusuke Mikami
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  3. Shinji Taneda
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  4. Yoki Mori
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  5. Akira K. Suzuki
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  6. Kazue Ohkura
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  8. Shin Yoshino
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  9. Koh-ichi Seki
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Correspondence to Koh-ichi Seki.

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Noya, Y., Mikami, Y., Taneda, S. et al. Improvement of an efficient separation method for chemicals in diesel exhaust particles: analysis for nitrophenols. Environ Sci Pollut Res 15, 318–321 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-008-0006-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-008-0006-3

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