Advances in thin film micro-extraction (TFME) of selected organic pollutants, and the evaluation of the sample preparation procedures using the AGREEprep green metric tool

[Display omitted] •TFME is an efficient pre-concentration technique for organic pollutants.•Good performance parameters are obtained during TFME processes.•TFME procedures have a relatively low environmental footprint.•AGREEprep overall scores for TFME procedures are relatively high. Organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, pesticides and drug residues pose serious risks on human health even at trace concentrations. Some of them are carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic as well as having endocrine disrupting effects to humans. Thus, the levels of these organic pollutants in food and environmental samples should be closely monitored. This paper explores the use of TFME during the pre-concentration of pesticides, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and drug residues in complex matrices prior to instrumental analysis. The use of TFME for the pre-concentration of organic pollutants is gaining momentum among researchers. This can be attributed to the fact that TFME is easy to perform, fast and environmentally friendly. In this paper various TFME extraction phases were analysed with particular emphasis on their figures of merit in a bid to determine their effectiveness during the pre-concentration process. The green character of some selected TFME procedures were evaluated using the AGREEprep metric tool and it was established that they generally have low environmental footprint. In addition, the future prospects of the TFME process were explored in detail towards the end of the paper.