Quantification of Persistent Organic Pollutants by Microwave Extraction and Soxhlet Extraction in Tailing Samples in Nandan County, Guangxi Province, China

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in tailings have been a great threat to human health, which may cause several diseases such as hypertension, breathing difficulties, and cancer. Quantification of POPs in tailing samples is of great importance to guarantee the food safety and human health. In this work, a microwave extraction was adopted as the pretreatment method for the quantification of POPs in tailing samples, which exhibited a comparable accuracy to the Soxhlet extraction. In addition, POPs in samples derived from different mining depths and different mine types were analyzed by the microwave extraction–based method, with the purpose to give a brief understanding of the POPs’ pollutions in Nandan County. The results show that 29 kinds of POPs were detected in the nonferrous tailings in Nandan County. Also, the distribution and concentration of POPs at different depths and in different ponds vary significantly. Our work offers a new strategy for the analysis of POPs in nonferrous tailings and exhibits a huge potential in the accurate detection of organic toxic chemicals in complex solid samples for applications in environmental monitoring and exploitation of mining resources.