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Chromatographic Methods for Environment, Biota and Food Contaminants Analysis
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Chromatographic Methods for Environment, Biota and Food Contaminants Analysis

A special issue of Separations (ISSN 2297-8739). This special issue belongs to the section "Chromatographic Separations".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 December 2025 | Viewed by 1346

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Melinda Haydee Kovács

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Guest Editor
Research Institute for Analytical Instrumentation, A Subsidiary of the National Institute of Research and Development for Optoelectronics, 400293 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Interests: global change; environmental pollution; ecosystem services; soil microbiodiversity; gas chromatography
Dr. Emőke Dalma Kovács

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Guest Editor
Research Institute for Analytical Instrumentation, A Subsidiary of the National Institute of Research and Development for Optoelectronics, 400293 Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Interests: chromatography; agricultural chemistry; mass spectrometry; microbiota; global change

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues，

Controlling and preventing ecosystem pollution has become a primary global concern. Anthropogenic activities such as industrial spills, agricultural runoff, improper waste disposal, and other daily activities introduce numerous organic contaminants into various ecosystems, affecting soil, water, the air, and ultimately biota and food. In addition, the formation of transformation products or metabolites from contaminants and residues is becoming an increasingly important topic for the scientific community. Organic compounds can form different compounds, through either transformation products or metabolites, due to metabolism, photolysis, and chemical and hydrolysis processes that take place in organisms and the environment. Some of these products have been reported to have more harmful effects on the ecosystem, biota, and human health than the original compound. Therefore, establishing effective monitoring methods is indispensable for assessing ecosystem and food quality, identifying sources of pollution and implementing remedial or corrective measures.

Chromatography is essential for identifying and quantifying various organic pollutants in many complex environmental, biota, or food samples. Some of the challenges currently identified in the use of chromatographic methods for the analysis of environmental, biota, and food contaminants have arisen from the complexity of the matrices analyzed, the lack of standardized analytical procedures dedicated to the new generation of contaminants, the scarcity of knowledge about all potential contaminants, and not least the trace amounts that these new generation pollutants and their by-products might be found in in environmental, biota, or food matrices. This Special Issue aims to deepen our knowledge of chromatographic techniques used for assessing pollution challenges in environmental matrices, biota and food samples, thus inspiring innovative monitoring solutions throughout to contribute to a cleaner and more sustainable global environment based on different chromatographic techniques.

Dr. Melinda Haydee Kovács
Dr. Emőke Dalma Kovács
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Separations is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Gas chromatography
  • Liquid chromatography
  • Detectors (including mass spectrometer)
  • Extraction procedures
  • Purification techniques
  • Environmental samples
  • Biological samples

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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17 pages, 2349 KiB  
Article
Sustainable Soil Volatilome: Discrimination of Land Uses Through GC-MS-Identified Volatile Organic Compounds
by Emoke Dalma Kovacs, Teodor Rusu and Melinda Haydee Kovacs
Separations 2025, 12(4), 92; https://doi.org/10.3390/separations12040092 - 8 Apr 2025
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Abstract
This study investigates soil volatilomics as an innovative approach to assessing the impact of land use on soil quality. This research addresses the critical need for sensitive diagnostic tools to distinguish subtle biochemical variations in soils influenced by different land use management practices. [...] Read more.
This study investigates soil volatilomics as an innovative approach to assessing the impact of land use on soil quality. This research addresses the critical need for sensitive diagnostic tools to distinguish subtle biochemical variations in soils influenced by different land use management practices. Soil samples were collected along a land use transect in Cluj County. Their volatile organic compounds were extracted by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS–SPME) followed by a gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) analysis. A multivariate statistical method was used to differentiate the volatilome profile. Among the 106 detected compounds, oxygenated species dominated across all land uses, with the highest concentrations in forest soils (77%), followed by grasslands (71%) and agricultural soils (65%). Principal component analysis revealed distinct clustering patterns, with the first two components explaining 72.8% of the total variance (PC1: 41.7%, PC2: 31.1%). Supervised PLS-DA modeling demonstrated robust land use discrimination, achieving AUC values of 0.868 for agricultural versus forest comparisons and 0.810 for both forest versus grassland and grassland versus agricultural comparisons. The volatilome diversity analysis indicated that grasslands contained the highest number of distinct compounds (64), closely followed by forest soils (63), while agricultural soils showed reduced diversity (51). These key findings revealed distinct volatile signatures, with forest soils exhibiting the highest complexity and agricultural soils demonstrating a more homogeneous profile, whereas grassland soils presented high internal variability. These results underscore the potential of soil volatilome profiling as a sensitive indicator of the effects of land use on soil biochemical processes and support the utility of soil volatilomics in sustainable land management and ecosystem monitoring. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Chromatographic Methods for Environment, Biota and Food Contaminants Analysis)
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17 pages, 2312 KiB  
Article
Green Chemistry Method for Analyzing Bisphenol A in Milk
by Angela M. Encerrado Manriquez and Wen-Yee Lee
Separations 2025, 12(2), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/separations12020025 - 25 Jan 2025
Viewed by 757
Abstract
A simple, fast, green, and sensitive method for determining Bisphenol A (BPA) levels in commercial milk was developed using a solventless sample preparation technique known as stir bar sorptive extraction, coupled with thermal desorption–gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. BPA was selected due to its ubiquitous [...] Read more.
A simple, fast, green, and sensitive method for determining Bisphenol A (BPA) levels in commercial milk was developed using a solventless sample preparation technique known as stir bar sorptive extraction, coupled with thermal desorption–gas chromatography/mass spectrometry. BPA was selected due to its ubiquitous presence in the environment and its classification as an endocrine-disrupting chemical of concern (i.e., its ability to mimic hormone functions). Studies have reported that BPA can leach into various food sources, including milk, a dietary staple for infants. It is critical to have an effective and efficient process for monitoring the presence of BPA in milk to protect children’s health. Current detection methods for BPA in milk are lengthy and tedious and tend to require the use of organic solvents for the extraction of BPA. This optimized “green” method provides an effective alternative for BPA detection in a challenging matrix, e.g., milk. Factors such as pH (1.5, 6, and 13), temperature (70–80 °C), and sonication (1 h, 2 h, and 3 h) were studied with a BPA-spiked whole milk sample (final concentration of 8 ppb) to optimize the extraction efficiency without the use of solvents. The developed methodology improves BPA recovery from whole milk by over 50%, with a detection limit in the parts per trillion range (45 ng/L). The sample preparation developed in this report rendered a more sensitive option for analyzing BPA in milk, with a limit of detection in the parts per trillion range (compared to low ppb) even though the recovery performance is not as good as in reported studies (54% vs. >85%); nonetheless, it provides a green alternative for future studies assessing BPA exposure through dairy products. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Chromatographic Methods for Environment, Biota and Food Contaminants Analysis)
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