Abstract
Green analytical chemistry focuses on making analytical procedures more environmentally benign and safer to humans. The amounts and toxicity of reagents, generated waste, energy requirements, the number of procedural steps, miniaturization, and automation are just a few of the multitude of criteria considered when assessing an analytical methodology’s greenness. The use of greenness assessment criteria requires dedicated tools. We propose the Analytical GREEnness calculator, a comprehensive, flexible, and straightforward assessment approach that provides an easily interpretable and informative result. The assessment criteria are taken from the 12 principles of green analytical chemistry (SIGNIFICANCE) and are transformed into a unified 0–1 scale. The final score is calculated based on the SIGNIFICANCE principles. The result is a pictogram indicating the final score, performance of the analytical procedure in each criterion, and weights assigned by the user. Freely available software makes the assessment procedure straightforward. It is open-source and downloadable from https://mostwiedzy.pl/AGREE.
Highlights
Green analytical chemistry focuses on making analytical procedures more environmentally benign and safer to humans
While green chemistry metric systems, mainly applied in chemical synthesis, usually refer to the mass of the product, this is not a viable approach in the case of analytical chemistry, where there is no obvious product with a particular mass.[3]
The first reported approach, named the National Environmental Methods Index (NEMI),[4] is a metric system based on a simple pictogram, divided into four parts, each of them reflecting a different criterion
Summary
The second procedure is based on solvent extraction (SE) followed by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) with GC-MS/MS determination.[25] The procedure involves sample preparation with a reduced number of steps (p 1), the mass of the soil sample is 2 g (p 2), and the analytical device is positioned in off-line mode (p 3). As the determination of PBDEs in soil matrices is not a simple analytical task, significant energy and material inputs are required to isolate, separate, and quantify these compounds This is reflected in generally low scores of AGREE analysis. Lower sample size, higher analytical throughput, possibility to apply bio-based solvents, and lack of other hazards (no hexane is applied, which is toxic to aquatic life) are advantages of the SBSE-based procedure
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