Electrochemical Approach to Detection of Chlorophene in Water Catalyzed by a Laccase Modified Gold Electrode

Despite the increasing number of reports that relate antimicrobial chlorophene (CP) with health and environmental effects, few studies have addressed biosensing technologies to detect this threat. This work proposed an electrochemical approach for the detection of CP using laccase enzymes as an alternative recognition element immobilized onto thin-film gold electrodes. The electrochemical parameters of the detection method, under controlled conditions, resulted in a limit of detection (0.14 +/- 0.06 mg L-1) and quantification (0.48 +/- 0.04 mg L-1) that agreed with concentrations of CP that already had been measured in natural water samples. Nevertheless, during the analysis of natural river water samples, the provided method suffered a drawback due to matrix effects reflected in the obtained recovery percentage, the value of which was 62.0 +/- 2.4% compared to the 101.3 +/- 3.5% obtained by the HPLC reference method. These detrimental effects were mainly attributed to organic matter, SO4-2, and Cl- present in river samples.