Plastic use in clinical LC-MS analysis
In collaboration with scientists from the University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital, we have investigated an often-overlooked aspect of analytical chemistry: the environmental cost of sample preparation. Using ketamine analogues in whole blood as a case study, we compared protein precipitation, liquid-liquid extraction, and electromembrane extraction (EME) in terms of analytical performance, plastic consumption, solvent use, and overall sustainability. While all methods performed similarly analytically, EME reduced plastic consumption by 40%, used far less organic solvent, and achieved the highest greenness score. The study proposes a practical benchmark for plastic use in clinical and forensic laboratories and highlights the potential of EME as a more sustainable sample preparation platform for future bioanalytical workflows.