Ionic Liquids in Biological Monitoring for Exposure Assessments

Abstract Ionic liquids (ILs) have been widespread based on their unique characteristics such as non-volatility, favorable viscosity and non-flammability in most cases as an excellent solvent for extraction and separation of organic and inorganic analytes. Because of requirement and importance of selectivity, sensitivity and limit of detection in biological monitoring of environmental/occupational studies, ILs showed good performance to obtain such goals. This review presents and discusses published results in which ILs have been used to pre-concentrate and separate common pollutants in occupational exposure, including heavy metals, polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), pesticides, biomarkers, etc. from biological samples such as urine, blood, serum, hair, nail and saliva. In additions, brief description of toxicology, industrial usages and ways of exposure to pollutants, which made their monitoring important, are presented as well This work makes it possible to identify opportunities and limitations of ILs in biological monitoring for using in exposure assessments. The range of presented applications shows the possibility of using various atomic/molecular spectroscopy and chromatographic methods in coupled with ILs for biological monitoring. The current overview aimed to present a perspective to use of ILs in determination of further analytes or toxic indicators and metabolites.