Possibilities and limitations of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for the detection of 1-nitropyrene in air particulate matter

ELISAs (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays) are generally used in environmental analytical chemistry for screening purposes. In this work the applicability of a polyclonal-based 1-nitropyrene-ELISA for the quantification of the target analyte in air particulate matter was investigated. Validation was performed using an HPLC method with fluorescence detection of the reduced form of 1-nitropyrene. It was found that the immunoassay is not only sensitive for the target analyte but to a certain extent also for other cross-reacting molecules present in the sample, such as 2-nitropyrene and 2-nitrofluoranthene, which were identified by GC-HRMS and are considered to be products of photochemically induced reactions of pyrene or fluoranthene, respectively. The degree of correlation between ELISA and HPLC results for collected samples of air particulate matter was inversely dependent on the distance between the sampling location and the source.