Direct determination of chlorophenols in landfill leachates by solid-phase micro-extraction–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

Landfill leachates represent a serious environmental concern with regard to trace priority pollutants introduced into the aquatic environment. From the analytical point of view, they constitute complex matrices because of their high organic matter content and competition with the trace analytes in the extraction procedure. Although the use of SPME to extract chlorophenols in leachates has already been described in several publications, the limited number of chlorophenols restricts this analysis field of application. This paper presents a new analytical methodology to determine 13 chlorophenols and phenol by SPME–GC–MS in landfill leachates. The overall analysis was performed in 90 min and the detection limits range from 0.005 μg/l (pentachlorophenol) to 2.5 μg/l (phenol). Reproducibility, expressed by the coefficient of variation of repeated extractions at different concentration levels of the analytes, was on average inferior to 10%. Recovery, evaluated by standard addition to leachates, was 86.2% on average. Pentachlorophenol, 2,3,4,5-tetrachlorophenol and 2,3,4,6-tetrachlorophenol were the sole analytes detected at nanogram level in the landfill leachates analysed.