Occurrence of and radioanalytical methods used to determine medical radionuclides in environmental and biological samples. A review.

Medical radionuclides are widely used in nuclear medicine practices today. Their production, handling and administration have different impacts on the environment and society due to the radioactive waste generated. Over recent years authors have taken an interest in the monitoring and safe disposal of this radiopharmaceutical waste, mainly in environmental and biological samples, and consequently a variety of radioanalytical methods for these matrices have been developed.

Nuclear medicine: workplace monitoring and internal occupational exposure during a ventilation/perfusion single-photon emission tomography.

The administration of Tc-HDP to diagnose pulmonary thromboembolisms leads to the presence of Tc in the environment of a nuclear medicine department, which could pose a potential risk of internal contamination to medical staff. Therefore, air samples from the administration room, gamma camera room and corridor of such a department were taken for the purpose of performing a workplace monitoring program of the medical centre under study, with maximum activity values of 640 ± 30 kBq/m, 1.5 ± 0.

Presence of artificial radionuclides in samples from potable water and wastewater treatment plants.

Human activity, such as the operation of nuclear power plants (NPPs) and the use of radionuclides in nuclear medicine, results in the presence of artificial radionuclides in surface waters, which may even reach potable water treatment plants (PWTPs) and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). In this study, water and sludge samples from a PWTP are radiologically monitored. The incoming water of the plant is influenced by the presence of an NPP upstream.

Sensitivity Enhancement in Capillary Electrophoresis Using Magnetic Particles as Solid-Phase Extraction Sorbents for the Determination of Drugs of Abuse in Urine.

Over the last few years, different types of magnetic particles have been investigated and successfully used in sample preparation, of which iron oxides are the most popular, due to their low price and low toxicity. For analytical purposes, these particles have always been modified and functionalized with different materials to improve their stability and introduce new surface properties. Here we describe the preparation of silica-coated iron oxide particles functionalized with C and their application as solid-phase extraction sorbents coupled in-line with capillary electrophoresis for determining drugs of abuse in human urine.

Findings in the hair of drug abusers using pressurized liquid extraction and solid-phase extraction coupled in-line with capillary electrophoresis.

A suitable method has been developed and validated for simultaneously determining cocaine and its major metabolite, benzoylecgonine, 6-acetylmorphine, codeine, morphine and the methadone enantiomers in human hair samples by the in-line coupling between SPE and CyD-assisted CE with a previous sample pretreatment procedure based on pressurized liquid extraction. Optimal separation was achieved on a fused silica-capillary of 50μm i.d.