RESUMO
Malathion is a broad-spectrum Organophosphorus insecticide generally used to control a variety of insects. Routinely it is analysed by Gas Liquid Chromatography & High Performance Liquid Chromatography. Now an attempt has been made to develop a new method for analysis of Malathion in biological samples using Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) technique, which is inexpensive, accurate and non-destructive. Malathion was extracted from blood and urine using solvent extraction methods and then identified on the TLC plates. For chromatographic separation, various binary and tertiary solvent systems were used to demonstrate in the laboratory. For detection on developed plates, palladium chloride reagent was used which successfully increased the sensitivity without dispensing with the simplicity of the method. For the analysis, a total of 20 solvent systems were chosen. Out of these 20 solvent systems, the three best solvent systems namely Cyclohexane: Chloroform (60:40), Hexane: Acetone (80:20) and Acetone: Hexane: Toluene (40:40:20) were chosen for statistical analysis which included the calculation of mean Rf value, value of standard deviation and coefficient of variance. The method developed is simple, inexpensive, accurate and non-destructive that allows for sensitive and reproducible analysis of Malathion.