Partial Dechlorination of Some DDT Insecticides and Determination of DDT Metabolites in an Environmental Sample

Abstract

Partial dechlorination of a group of DDT insecticides was performed using a catalytic dechlorination technique, based on NiCl₂/NaBH₄ as catalyst and capillary column GC-MS. On the basis of GC-MS data obtained for the degraded DDT products, metabolites of a soil sample contaminated with DDT were identified. Furthermore, the dechlorination sequence for p, p′-DDT as proposed earlier is confirmed by GC-MS data.

Key Words:

• DDT
• dechlorination
• GC-MS
• Ion trap detector.