Abstract: | ABSTRACTA sensitive and reproducible screening analytical method is here proposed for the determination of six non dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (NDL-PCBs, congener 28, 52, 101, 138, 153, 180) in chicken eggs based on accelerated solvent extraction (ASE) procedure for the fat extraction and determination, a solid phase extraction (SPE) sample clean-up process, and a gas chromatography – electron capture detection (GC-ECD) analysis. The optimized chromatographic separation, in less than 25 min, returned good responses for the six NDL-PCBs in the range of 2.5–60.0 µg L?1, with correlation coefficients always higher than 0.9995. Instrumental limits of detection were between 0.08–0.35 µg L?1, corresponding to 0.05 and 0.23 ng g?1 fat in the matrix, while method detection limits, calculated on spiked egg samples, ranged from 1.6 to 3.5 ng g?1 fat. The method has been extensively validated in terms of selectivity, sensitivity, recovery, precision, ruggedness and measurement uncertainty, following the European Directives. |