Fast and precise determination of phenthoate and its enantiomeric ratio in soil by the matrix solid-phase dispersion method and liquid chromatography.

A fast and precise method was developed for the determination of phenthoate and its enantiomeric ratio (ER) in three soil samples. A recently developed sample pretreatment technology--matrix solid-phase dispersion (MSPD) was used to extract phenthoate simply and effectively. MSPD conditions, i.e. solid-phase Florisil amount, water content of Florisil-soil mixture, the constituent and volume of the eluting solvent, were optimized stepwise. The MSPD extract was directly used for quantitative determination of phenthoate by silica-based high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with UV detection. The recoveries of phenthoate from three different types of soils fortified at three levels of 0.1, 1, 10 microg/g ranged from 75 to 94% with RSDs of 1.5-6.5%. On this basis, phenthoate was further isolated from the remainder of MSPD extract by silica-based HPLC and then ER determined on HPLC with cellulose tris-3, 5-dimethylphenylcarbamate as chiral stationary phase. The ERs determined in the soils spiked with racemic or enantiomer-enriched phenthoate agreed sufficiently well with those in the corresponding standard solutions. Finally, the proposed method was successfully applied to the study of enantioselective degradation of phenthoate in the three soils under laboratory conditions. High enantioselectivity was observed in the two alkaline soils with (+)-enantiomer degrading faster than the (-)-enantiomer, while there was little to no enantioselectivity in the acidic soil. The methodology can be used to study the enantioselective environmental behavior of chiral pollutants.