Abstract
Increased use of environmentally friendly practices has become a trend in science because of the current awareness regarding climate change and related issues. Similarly for analytical chemistry, considering the development of greener methods for reducing the use of reagents and samples and also toxic waste generation. To meet such goals, automation, and miniaturisation of sample preparation—a well-recognised laborious and time-consuming analytical step—are two promising strategies. This work associates the greener aspects of miniaturisation and the performance of automated sample preparation. Therefore, we proposed an analytical method using a miniaturised extraction column for pre-concentrating sulphamerazine, sulphamethazine, sulphamethoxazole, sulphadimethoxine, sulphathiazole, and sulphachlorpyridazine from honey and cleaning-up the samples. Several variables were optimised: extractive phase, loading flow, loading phase, and loading time. Under optimised conditions, the method showed adequate linearity between 5.0 and 60 ng g−1 with R > 0.99, and also good selectivity and recovery (114.6–124.1%) which are acceptable according to Brazilian legislation. Intra and inter-day precision were in the range 3.0–5.0%. Although sulphonamides were detected in one of the eight commercial honey samples, the value was below the established MRL. The method showed efficiency, while also exhibiting greener characteristics resulting from miniaturisation and automation, representing a promising environmentally friendly alternative for conventional sample preparation methods.
Graphical Abstract
Disclosure statement
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Author contributions
Victória Montenegro de Campos: experimental working and writing—original draft. Mariana Aissa Andrade: experimental support and writing—original draft. Edvaldo Vasconcelos Soares Maciel: investigation, and writing—original draft, review and editing. Ana Lúcia de Toffoli: writing—review. Fernando Mauro Lanças: conceptualization, resources, and writing—review and editing.
Data availability statement
Experimental data are available throughout the manuscript and in the Supplemental Material.