Improved codistillation method for determination of carbon tetrachloride, ethylene dichloride, and ethylene dibromide in grain and grain-based products.

A method is described for the determination of the common fumigants carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), ethylene dichloride (EDC), and ethylene dibromide (EDB) in grain and grain-based products. A properly prepared sample is mixed with water and hexane, an internal standard mixture of 1,2-dichloropropane (DCP) and 1,2-dibromopropane (DBP) is added, and the fumigants are codistilled with the hexane into an appropriate receiver. After the hexane solution is dried over sodium sulfate, the quantities of fumigants present are quantitated on a gas chromatograph (GC) equipped with an electron capture detector (ECD). For the matrices investigated, the relative standard deviation of the method was 6.0, 9.7, and 23.1% for CCl4, EDC, and EDB, respectively. Recoveries of added fumigants were 107, 95, and 101%, respectively. Comparison with an acetone-water soak extraction method gave a correlation of 0.967 between methods for EDB with odds of a difference between methods of 35%.