Gas-liquid chromatographic determination of polychlorinated biphenyls and a selected number of chlorinated hydrocarbons in serum.

A method is proposed for concurrently determining the levels of multiple intact exogenous compounds in serum, particularly polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) as Aroclor (AR) 1254 and chlorinated hydrocarbons (CHs). Bovine serum pools containing in vivo-bound PCBs (as AR 1254) and in vitro-spiked CHs are used to evaluate the method, which encompasses serum denaturation with methanol, mixed solvent extraction, multiple solvent fractionation from activated silica gel, and determination by electron capture gas-liquid chromatography. Mean recoveries of the in vitro-spiked 9 CHs at levels of 2.0-29.1 ppb ranged from 52.8 to 98.4% from trial environmental pools; mean recoveries of the in vivo-bound PCBs (as AR 1254) were 114.1 and 92.6% at levels of 10 and 50 ppb, respectively.