Use of polyoxyethylene surfactants for the extraction of organochlorine pesticides from agricultural soils

Two non-ionic surfactant mixtures (POLE and Polyoxyethylene 10 Cetyl ether, POLE and Polyoxyethylene 10 Stearyl ether) have been used for microwave-assisted extraction of six organochlorine pesticides from agricultural soils prior to being determined by HPLC-UV. An experimental design was applied for the determination of variables which affect to recovery and to optimize the extraction parameters, surfactant concentration and volume, microwave time and power. Under the optimized conditions, the method was applied to different soil samples in order to analyze the influence of soil characteristics on the pesticides extraction. The results obtained indicate that most of these compounds can be recovered in good yields with RSD lower than 10% and detection limit ranged between 80 and 800 ng g−1 for the pesticides studied. The proposed method was applied to a reference soil sample and to aged soils.