Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
1
The Concept of Green Analytical Chemistry
Miguel de la Guardia and Salvador Garrigues
Department of Analytical Chemistry, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
1.1
Green Analytical Chemistry in the frame of Green Chemistry
Three years ago, when we published our review paper on Green Analytical Chemistry [1] it was clear that, at
this time, Green Chemistry was a well established paradigm well supported by more than 50 published topics,
an increasing number of research teams who influenced the scientific literature and involved the editions of
special journals like
Green Chemistry
or
Green Chemistry Letters and Reviews
. However, there was a big
contrast between the situation of green catalyst development and the scarce use of the term Green Analytical
Chemistry in the literature. In spite of the fact that many studies from 1995 [2-5] were focused on the
objective of reducing the analytical wastes and making the methods environmentally friendly and sustainable
there was little conscience in the analytical community about the use of green or sustainable terms to define
their work.
Fortunately, the efforts of research teams like those of Jacek Namiesnick in Poland [6-9] and Mihkel Koel
and Mihkel Kaljurand in Estonia [10-11] have contributed to establish the main principles and strategies
which support the green practices in analytical chemistry and, because of that, the publication of the topics
of Koel and Kaljuran [12] in 2010, de la Guardia and Armenta [13] in 2011, and that of de la Guardia and
Garrigues [14] in 2011 evidenced that nowadays Green Analytical Chemistry is becoming a movement which
can modify our perspective and practices in the analytical field in future years.
A simple idea could be to consider Green Analytical Chemistry as a part of the whole green chemistry idea, in
the same way that someone could consider that analytical chemistry is the part of chemistry devoted to development
and analysis. However, it is evident that analytical chemistry itself is not a part, but all chemistry, observed from
an analytical viewpoint which consists of searching for the differences between atoms, molecules and chemical
structures. Ahead of considering the links between the elements of the periodic table or evaluating the molecules
from the presence of a functional groups, analytical chemistry focuses on the differences between atoms and
