The risk of heavy metal toxicity has always been of great concern to both the environment and human health. Exposure to heavy metals—specifically lead and cadmium—is a common problem for several industrial occupations, such as welding, construction, and battery production. Preventing heavy metal poisoning and toxicity in factories and relevant areas rely heavily on an accurate method of detection. The methods currently available are not only invasive to the individual, but also require large amounts of sample and incorporate expensive techniques for the given analysis. Therefore, the goal of this research is to develop an environmentally friendly and cost effective electrochemical sensor that accurately detects the presence of cadmium and lead in clinical and environmental samples. The use of a cloud point extraction (CPE) on Cd and Pb is currently being investigated as an extraction method to ultimately analyze via anodic stripping voltammetry (AVS). CPE is already well-established for the separation of preconcentrated hydrophobic species from water in the form of micelles, eliminating the use of environmentally toxic organic solvents. While ASV is the ultimate goal for the development of an electrochemical sensor, atomic absorbance spectroscopy (AAS) is currently being employed as a detection method for the overall efficacy and percent recovery of the CPE for both Pb and Cd in a single sample. Voltammetry for detection presents several challenges, in particular, that the use of surfactants further convolutes the already complex sample.

Voltammetric detection of lead and cadmium using a cloud point extraction

255th National Meeting (2018)

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