Eco-friendly alternatives for propoxur extraction from meat

Abstract

Propoxur, an insecticide used to control opportunistic fleas and flies, is mainly ingested with meat. Considering that the common methods of propoxur determination in meat are time-consuming, employ toxic extraction solvents, and generate large amounts of waste, we herein established greener, faster, and cheaper alternatives. Two methods were developed: flow solid-liquid extraction or solid-liquid microextraction with low-temperature partitioning. Increasing the sensitivity and decreasing the limit of detection were accomplished by employing cloud point preconcentration of the intensely colored reaction product and long pathlength spectrophotometry. The method shows a linear response range within 0.01–1.0 µmol L−1 and coefficient of variation = 5.0%, n = 15. The limits of detection and quantification were estimated at 7.9 and 26.2 µg kg−1 at the 99.7% confidence level, respectively. The parameters were lower than the maximum residue limit of propoxur in meat (50.0 μg kg−1), and the recoveries were obtained for spiked meat samples (75–112%). The proposed methods for propoxur extraction are practical, easy to implement, and simple to perform, in addition to requiring low amounts of solvents and low waste generation.