Junior Researcher and PhD student of the Institute of Agriculture, Agrobiology Laboratory Karolina Barčauskaitė, attended an internship at the Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment (Czech Republic) at June 1–30.
RECETOX (Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment) is an independent department at Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, with its own research and development, educational programs and expert activities within the field of environmental contamination. Centre focuses on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), polar organic compounds, toxic metals and their species and natural toxins – cyanotoxins.
The aim of the internship was to improve knowlege into persistent organic pollutants investigations, to get more practical skills using chromatography system with MS/MS detector. Get expierence which will be useful in the future method developing steps for persistent organic pollutants determination in soil, composts and plants.
During the internship in soil, compost and spring barley grain samples concentration of PAHs were determined. Moreover, a lot of experience was gained in sample extraction, clean-up and chromatography analysis procedures for non-polar organic compounds. Was visited National Atmospheric Observatory in Košetice, Czech Republic. This is the less contaminated area in Czech Republic surounded of forests where using passive and active air samplers, air monitoring is done for more than 30 years. Using mordern analytical techniques POPs, PM 2.5, PM 5, PM 10 are determined in air.
Scientific internship was suported by European Union structural funds according support program Nr. 09.3.3-LMT-K-712 “Scientists and other researchers and students development of competence through practical scientific activities”.
