A proposed image-based detection of methamidophos pesticide using peroxyoxalate chemiluminescence system

Abstract

Pesticides pose a serious public health risk due to their toxicity, such as in the case of the widely distributed organophosphorus pesticide methamidophos. There is a strong need to develop a simple, rapid, and cost-effective method of detecting methamidophos residues; thus, this study proposes the TCPO-Rubrene-H2O2 chemiluminescence (CL) system as a means of pesticide detection via quenching effect. The results show that the methamidophos concentration is inversely proportional to the CL system's light output as confirmed through fluorescence spectroscopy and Batch Measure Macro (BMM) analysis. The light intensity differences were correlated with the methamidophos concentration with both methods showing linear trends. Both the digital camera and the smartphone camera BMM analyses displayed good sensitivity, with respective detection limits of 1.6 μg/mL and 1.0 μg/mL and respective quantitation limits of 5.0 μg/mL and 3.0 μg/mL. Both also showed good linearity within the 100-10000 μg/mL range, suggesting viability as alternatives to the fluorescence spectrometer; however, the light intensity difference values per pesticide concentration of both camera systems were significantly different from one another owing to differences in camera features.

Keywords

• rubrene
• smartphone camera
• chemiluminescence
• batch measure macro
• image analysis