New antibody and immunoassay pretreatment strategy to screen polychlorinated biphenyls in Korean transformer oil.

Development and modifications are described that expand the application of an immunoassay from the detection of Kanechlors (Japanese technical PCBs mixtures) to the detection of Aroclors (U. S. technical PCB mixtures, used in Korea) in contaminated Korean transformer oil. The first necessary modification was the development of a new antibody with a reactivity profile favorable for Aroclors. The second modification was the addition of a second column to the solid-phase extraction method to reduce assay interference caused by the Korean oil matrix. The matrix interference is suspected to be caused by the presence of synthetic oils (or similar materials) present as contaminants. The modified assay was validated by comparison to high-resolution gas chromatography/high-resolution mass spectrometry analysis, and was shown to be tolerant of up to 10% of several common synthetic insulating oils. Finally the screening performance of the modified assay was evaluated using 500 used transformer oil samples of Korean origin, and was shown to have good performance in terms of false positive and false negative rates. This report provides evidence for the first establishment of immunoassay screening for Aroclor based PCB contamination in Korean transformer oil.