Determination of ethyl glucuronide in hair: a rapid sample pretreatment involving simultaneous milling and extraction

A combination of simultaneous milling and extraction known as micropulverized extraction was developed for the quantification of the alcohol marker ethyl glucuronide (EtG) in hair samples using a homogeneous reference material and a mixer mill. Best extraction results from 50 mg of hair were obtained with 2-mL plastic tubes containing two steel balls (∅ = 5 mm), 0.5 mL of water and with an oscillating frequency of 30 s(-1) over a period of 30 min. EtG was quantified employing a validated GC-MS procedure involving derivatization with pentafluoropropionic acid anhydride. This micropulverization procedure was compared with dry milling followed by separate aqueous extraction and with aqueous extraction after manual cutting to millimeter-size snippets. Micropulverization yielded 28.0 ± 1.70 pg/mg and was seen to be superior to manually cutting (23.0 ± 0.83 pg/mg) and equivalent to dry grinding (27.7 ± 1.71 pg/mg) with regard to completeness of EtG extraction. The option to process up to 20 samples simultaneously makes micropulverization especially valuable for the high throughput of urgent samples.