Determination of chlordane in laboratory-generated environmental fate samples

Trans- and cis-chlordane have been analyzed in several samples used for aquatic environmental fate studies. These samples include air, water, fish and sediments, The procedures involve extraction with various solvents followed by sulfuric acid clean-up of the extracts. The various solvents used were hexane (air and water), isopropanol/hexane (sediment), and pentane (fish). The fish were further cleaned-up using acetonitrile/pentane partitioning. Extracts were concentrated prior to analysis by GC/ECD. The GC columns used were either 12.5 or 25 m fused silica capillary column coated with OV-17 or a 2 m × 2 mm glass column packed with 3% SE-30 on 80/100 mesh Gas Chrom Q. GC/MS confirmation was conducted on selected samples. Mean recoveries of trans- and cis-chlordane from the various media ranged from 83.0 to 104.5%, with precisions ranging from 3.0 to 15.6%. The lowest recoveries and precision were found for the fish samples. Limits of detection were 0.01, 0.38 and 0.30 ppb for both trans- and cis-chlordane in water, sediment and fish, respectively. The detection limit in air was 4.2 × 10 −5 ug/L. The analytical methods presented here could easily be implemented for routine analysis of trans- and cis-chlordane in environmental fate studies.