Review on Analysis Methodology of Phenoxy Acid Herbicide Residues

Phenoxy acid herbicides are a class of commercial herbicides widely used all over the world. Some of them will disrupt the endocrine of human beings and animals. As a result, European Union, USA, Japan, China, and other nations have defined the maximum residue limits for phenoxy acid herbicides. Obviously, sensitive and reliable detection methods are very necessary for monitoring these herbicide residues. In order to better understand the research progress in this aspect, this review summarizes the analysis methods of these herbicide residues in food and water from the year 1989 to 2014. On one hand, the separation analysis methods of multi-residues have been the mainstream of research, including gas chromatography, gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, high-performance liquid chromatography, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, and capillary electrophoresis. Single-residue detection mainly occurred in the early days, involving various types of immunoassay methods which account for 5.6 % literatures we can refer. On the other hand, sample pretreatment technique has always been an important part of the analysis methods for isolation and enrichment of analytes in multi-residue determination. These techniques include a variety of liquid-phase micro-extraction, solid-phase extraction methods, and the following developed solid-phase micro-extraction and molecular imprinted solid-phase extraction based on the above traditional methods. The quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) method, suitable for sample preparation of food and other complex matrices, is also reviewed. In general, multi-residue detection and environmentally friendly methods are the trends of development.