Microwave-assisted extraction of pharmaceuticals, personal care products and industrial contaminants in the environment

Abstract Microwave-assisted extraction (MAE) is a well-established automated green extraction technique, offering many advantages such as the combined reduction of the extraction time, solvent and energy consumptions, as well as the possibility of performing simultaneous multiple extractions, thus increasing the number of samples processed daily. This review provides a comprehensive description of the most relevant analytical methods and applications, proposed from year 2012, for the extraction of selected emerging pollutants, including pharmaceuticals and veterinary drugs, personal care products, as well as industrial contaminants, in environmental matrices. The novel developments and last technological trends such as the implementation of organic solvent-free extraction methods, the use of surfactants and ionic liquids, the combination with microextraction approaches or the introduction of systems that sequentially process the samples, are also addressed. Overall, MAE appears to be an excellent alternative for the determination of emerging organic pollutants, thereby enabling its application within the regulatory environmental field.