[Determination of dicofol residue in tea by wide-bore capillary gas chromatographic column]

Dicofol residue is harmful to health. More and more countries have established the limitation of dicofol in foods. This paper describes an efficient method of determination for the dicofol residue in tea. The dicofol was extracted from the tea sample with 20% acetone-hexane, cleaned up on a column of Florisil and acidic siliceous earth (sulfuric acid 0.3 mL/g) in series. Then the column was washed with 10 mL, 20% dichloromethane-hexane, the flow rate was 1 mL/min. At last dicofol was hydrolyzed with potassium hydroxide solution, forming p,p'-dichlorobenzophenone(DBP), which was separated from other ingredients through wide-bore capillary(LZ-II, 25 m x 0.53 mm i.d.) and determinated by gas chromatography with electron capture detector(ECD), using Aldrin as internal standard. When the mass ratio of dicofol was in the range of 0.05-3.0 mg/kg, the recoveries were 78%-104% and the limit of determination was 0.5 microgram/kg. This method is simple, sensitive and suitable for pesticide residue analysis. It can also be applied to the determination of dicofol residues in other plant samples such as vegetables, fruits and so on.