GREEN ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY METRICS IN THE EVALUATION OF AN ECOLOGICAL METHOD FOR THE DETERMINATION OF PESTICIDES BY HPLC-DAD

In recent years, the Brazilian government has authorized several agricultural pesticides, increasing the possibility of pollution of different ecosystems and the food consumed by a large part of the population. The analytical determination of pesticides can be carried out using different techniques associated with various methods. Their development and validation have been based on obtaining better reliability, meeting the requirements of environmental legislation, and adapting to the principles of Green Chemistry. Thus, a chromatographic method was developed for the separation and determination of eight agricultural pesticides (aldicarb, ametrine, atrazine, bendiocarb, carbaryl, hexazinone, methiocarb, and methomyl) in compliance with Green Chemistry criteria, using ethanol as the mobile phase, which it is an ecologically less aggressive solvent. The developed method showed efficient separation and excellent results for green analysis metrics with high scores on the Eco-scale and good presentation in the National Environmental Methods Index (NEMI), Green Analytical Procedure Index (GAPI), and Analytical Greenness Calculator Metric (AGREE) pictograms. The validation parameters indicated the linearity of the method with good precision, selectivity, and sensitivity with detection and quantification limits in the ranges of 0.50 to 0.94 mg L^–1 and 0.74 to 1.81 mg L^–1, respectively.

Keywords:
HPLC; ethanol; Green Chemistry; pesticides