Sample Treatment Methods for the Determination of Phenolic Environmental Estrogens in Foods and Drinking Water

Environmental endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are a large category of chemicals that can disrupt normal endocrine functions of organisms. They can enter the environment and foodstuffs in different ways and bring great threat to human health. Phenolic environmental estrogens (PEEs) are the typical representatives of EDCs and include bisphenols, alkylphenols, and others such as dibromophenol, dichlorophenol, 4-nitrophenononylphenol, etc. Even trace amounts of PEEs can cause serious damage to the human reproductive, nervous, and immune systems; therefore, it is very important to develop accurate and sensitive methods for their determination in different matrixes. At the present, there are still many challenges in the determination of PEEs in the samples with complex matrixes, and the sample treatment is one of the key issues. This review deals with the recent advances in sample treatment methods for the analysis of PEEs in foods and drinking water, including improved and newly developed liquid-liquid extraction, solid-phase extraction (SPE), magnetic SPE, matrix solid-phase dispersion with new adsorbent materials, and stir-bar sorptive extraction. In addition, the challenges and perspectives are also briefly discussed.