Long-term monitoring of atrazine contamination in soil by ELISA

An enzyme-linked immunoassay (ELISA) was used for screening atrazine residues in soil. Samples were annually collected in Southern Germany between 1993 and 1998. An average of 419.5 samples was analyzed per year amounting to 2517 samples. The fraction of positive samples defined by atrazine concentrations >100 microg/kg soil decreased successively from 8% (corresponding to 33 samples) in 1993 to 0.6% (corresponding to 2 samples) in 1998. All positive samples and a selection of negative samples were subsequently validated by HPLC. Comparison of ELISA and HPLC data yielded correlation coefficient values of r = 0.958-0.981 (n = 18-47), except for 1995 when only a correlation of r = 0.864 (n = 18) was obtained. Four samples were overestimated and another 4 were underestimated with respect to the atrazine threshold value of 100 microg/kg soil as revealed by HPLC validation. Thus, 99.68% of 2,517 analyzed samples were correctly evaluated. The precision and reproducibility of the ELISA were adequate for a prescreening tool. The low cost per sample and the high sample throughput are not yet achievable by conventional analytical methods. The described combination of ELISA and HPLC has the potential to take advantage of both methods and to restrict determination errors to a minimum.