Avoid instrument contamination from organochlorine pesticides in soil and water samples

If you are operating an environmental lab, you will know that instruments that are not operating due to unscheduled maintenance caused by inlet or column contamination are not only costing you money rather than making it, but are also jeopardising your capability of meeting your clients’ deadlines and performance requirements.

In all probability, you are also responsible for the lab that prepares samples for analysis, so you will understand the value in making the process simple, reproducible and effective, whilst mitigating the chance for error and providing a clean extract that will not shut down an instrument in the lab because of inlet-fouling matrix components that have made their way through the sample clean-up process.

Sadly, for the analysis of organochlorine pesticides in soil and water, the industry standard sample preparation product, which are activated Florisil SPE cartridges, are not capable of removing the worst of those sample matrix contaminants that condense inside inlet liners or cover the inlet side of the analytical column. Florisil is ideal for stopping polar compounds, but those usually are not the compounds that cause failed instrument calibration checks, which require additional maintenance, delay the processing of new samples and add the expense of replacing consumables ahead of schedule.

If your samples may contain those relatively high molecular weight sample matrix compounds that are the scourge of injection ports and sensitive analytes, you will need something different. Fortunately, new Resprep CarboPrep Plus SPE cartridges, from Restek, outperform Florisil cartridges in removing these troublesome compounds, protecting your system and keeping samples running through your lab efficiently.