Evaluation of enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in house dust and residential soil

• Published in: The Science of the total environment 1998-12, Vol.224 (1), p.189-199
• Main Authors: Chuang, Jane C, Pollard, Mary A, Chou, Ying-Liang, Menton, Ronald G, Wilson, Nancy K
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Air. Soil. Water. Waste. Feeding; Analysis methods; Applied sciences; Atmospheric pollution; Biological and medical sciences; Chromatography, Gas - methods; Dust; Dust - analysis; ELISA; Environment. Living conditions; Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay - methods; Evaluation Studies as Topic; Exact sciences and technology; GC/MS; Indoor pollution and occupational exposure; Mass Spectrometry - methods; Medical sciences; PAH; Pollution; Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons - analysis; Public health. Hygiene; Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine; Soil; Soil - analysis; Soil and sediments pollution; Soil Pollutants - analysis
• ISSN: 0048-9697; 1879-1026
• DOI: 10.1016/S0048-9697(98)00351-9

Two commercially available enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) for total polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and carcinogenic PAH (C-PAH) were evaluated. The testing procedures were refined for application to screening PAH and C-PAH in house dust and soil samples for human exposure studies. The overall method precision expressed as percent relative standard deviation (%RSD) of triplicate real world dust and soil samples was within ±29% (12–29%) for PAH ELISA and ±21% (5.9–21%) for C-PAH ELISA. Spike recoveries from real world dust/soil samples were 114±30% for phenanthrene from PAH ELISA and 120±8.2% for benzo[ a]pyrene from C-PAH ELISA. The overall method accuracy for PAH and C-PAH assays cannot be assessed for multiple PAH components in dust/soil samples (which represent real-world samples), because of the assays' cross reactivities with other PAH components. Over 100 dust/soil samples from 13 North Carolina homes and 22 Arizona homes were analyzed by PAH and C-PAH assays, as well as by the conventional gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) method. Statistical analysis showed that dust/soil PAH data from ELISA and GC/MS methods are significantly different. In general PAH ELISA responses were higher than PAH GC/MS responses. The regression analysis showed that the linear relationship between ELISA and GC/MS measurements is not strong in the combined data. The relationship became stronger for the data from the same type of dust/soil samples. The screening performance of ELISA was evaluated based on the frequency distribution of ELISA and GC/MS data. The results indicated that the ELISA PAH and C-PAH assays cannot be used as a quantitative analytical tool for determining PAH in real-world dust/soil samples. However, the ELISA is an effective screening tool for ranking PAH concentrations in similar types of real world dust/soil samples.