Evaluation of environmental polychlorobiphenyls and DDE in terms of mixtures of commercial preparations from peak heights of packed-column gas chromatograms using a programmable calculator.

A method is proposed for evaluating gas chromatograms of multi-component PCB mixtures and superposed single components simultaneously. Apparent concentrations relative to a calibration mixture are assigned to a number of suitable peaks, and the apparent concentrations are related to the true concentrations by a set of linear equations, which are solved by least-squares approximation. The results are provided with an estimate of their confidence intervals.