Sample treatment for the determination of steroid hormone contaminants in water samples: Analytical greenness assessment
Francesca Merlo, Antonella Profumo, Andrea Speltini
Abstract
Steroid hormones are a class of natural and/or synthetic organic compounds widely used in human and veterinary medicine, but also known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals because of their endocrine activity that makes their presence in water bodies reason of concern. To date, many sample treatment protocols have been developed for their sensitive determination, mainly entailing liquid- and solid-phase extractions, which are the focus of this review. Most procedures developed in the last four years have already simplified the protocols and improved the whole sample throughput, and this positive contribution can be further improved in the overall impact of analytical methods. In such scenario, the metric tool named AGREEprep has been here applied to highlight the strengths and the weaknesses of the selected procedures, critically assessing their impact on the environment according to the ten principles of green sample preparation.