The congener specific determination of PCBs: Carbon column chromatography of potentially toxic congeners

Carbon/glass-fibre chromatography has been used to separate nineteen potentially PCB toxic congeners including PCBs 77, 126, 169, 105 and 118 using hexane, dichloromethane and toluene as eluents. Recoveries from three spikes containing 70 to 200 ppb of authentic PCB congener standards ranged from 76% ± 6% (standard deviation, S.D.) to 98% ± 4% (S.D.), except for PCB 189 which had a recovery of 60% ± 10% (S.D.) and PCB 167 which had a recovery of 100% ± 16% (S.D.). This enrichment procedure can be used as a routine final clean-up for a variety of matrices before capillary column gas chromatography with electron capture detection.