Textile Museum Collections. SIM Method Validation for the Assessment of Pesticides

Abstract

In time the environmental conditions could damage textiles (materials/ artifacts) causing the need to develop better non-destructive or at least micro-destructive analysis techniques of the samples. There are ethnographic textile artifacts that were treated in the past with various pesticides, that have not been mentioned in any document. These are often re-treated with chemicals by museum staff as a method of preventing pest infestation. Due to the progressive use of many pesticides, this paper was focused on the detection and quantification of three pesticides: malathion, methoxychlor, and permethrin (cis- and trans- isomers). Gas chromatography is one of the most widely used analytical techniques for characterizing volatile organic compounds and therefore was the analytical method of choice for the present study. Because these analytes are found at trace levels, the detection and quantification limits of analytes are very small and it is necessary to optimize and validate a SIM method - that allows the mass spectrometer to detect specific compounds with high sensitivity. In SIM mode, the instrument is set to collect data at selected masses of interest, thus increasing the accuracy and precision of the quantitative results. The present paper is aimed to develop this type of method with specificity and selectivity, high precision (expressed in terms of repeatability and intermediate accuracy), accuracy, suitable working range and linearity, and high degree of series� homogenity.

New fabric phase sorptive extraction for nondestructive analysis of heritage textile samples

“…The proposed system is significant, as it focuses on assessing the risks to human health posed by the formerly widespread practice of pesticide use by developing and optimizing an innovative non-destructive extraction method, which can be used to assess pesticides from museum textile objects. The separation and detection methods are optimized, validated and described in another work [ 26 ].…”