Advances in miniaturization and increasing sensitivity in analysis of organic contaminants in marine biota samples

• Small-scale methods for extraction of marine biota samples are reviewed.
• Few methods are currently capable of extracting sample sizes below 0.5 g.
• An overview of recent advances in GC–MS/MS analysis is given.

In recent years there has been much progress in the miniaturization of sample treatment approaches for the analysis of organic contaminants. Whilst much focus has been given to analysis of liquid matrices (e.g., water, biological fluids), equivalent approaches for lipid rich biota samples have seen significantly less progress. This is especially the case for samples of very small organisms commonly employed as standard test species in ecotoxicity studies. Typically, the extractable biotic sample size available for body residue analysis is very small and the total pollutant accumulation can vary significantly between species types according to factors such as organism size, lipid content and exposure conditions. Depending on the physical and chemical characteristics of the analyte(s) in question, extraction and purification, especially from more complex matrices, appears to be one of the main bottlenecks in achieving their quantification. The current article presents a review of the available micro-extraction methods for small marine biota samples, focusing on environmentally important organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and pesticides.