Recent advances in biosensor based phthalate analysis

Phthalates are found in dye solvents, glues, cosmetics, personal care products, detergents and a variety of other products in addition to their use as plasticizers. For this reason, phthalates are called as "the everywhere chemical. " Despite their wide usage, people are becoming more concerned about phthalates with the better understanding of their effects on organisms and the environment. Many regulatory agencies classify phthalates as priority pollutants and restrict or prohibit their use. This situation has increased the importance of monitoring and detection of phthalates in various environmental and biological matrices including drinking and surface water, soil, sediment, indoor and/or outdoor air, food, milk, blood, saliva and urine. Conventional phthalate detection methods are usually laboratory-based and have significant drawbacks such as the requirement for appropriate laboratory settings and skilled workers as well as long test periods, expensive and complex processes. As a result, there is a growing interest on novel analytical techniques for detecting phthalates from a variety of media in a cost-effective, fast, selective and sensitive manner. Biosensor-based methods present alternatives to conventional detection approaches for the determination of phthalate from complicated matrixes. This chapter focuses on the recent approaches for biosensor-based phthalate analysis including biological/biomimetic recognition elements and novel sensor materials such as nanomaterials, metal-organic frameworks and micro or nano electromechanical systems.