Resumen de A brief view on the evolution of gas chromatography in environmental analysis: POPs in marine mammals as a case study

A. Bartalini, Juan Muñoz Arnanz, A. J. Fernández, B. Jiménez

• Gas chromatography (GC) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS), represents the election approach for the analysis of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in environmental matrices, such as marine mammals. From the first detection of POPs in this type of samples, many advances have been made to improve selectivity and sensitivity and to provide increasingly high-quality data.

  The objective of this article is to provide a brief insight into the evolution of POP analysis in samples of marine mammals since the second half of the last century. Notable advances on the detection of the analytes occurred in the last 40 years. GC coupled with electron capture detector (ECD) was replaced by the more selective GC coupled to low-resolution mass spectrometry (LRMS) and, in turn, by GC coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS). Little variations and advances have been made to the chromatographic approach, with GC column parameters basically being unchanged during 30 years.