Voltammetric analysis of Acetaminophen: when complexity does not pay

Acetaminophen is a long-established and one of the most extensively employed “painkiller” drugs in the world. For that reason, together with other pharmaceutical compounds, has been considered one of the emerging pollutants and its occurrence in the environment is a problem of increasing concern [1]. Several examples of electrochemical methodologies have been adopted and are available in literature, most of them involving hybrid or composite electrodes with complicate and costly preparation procedures (gold nanoparticle, multi-walled carbon nanotubes, fullerenes, boron-doped diamonds [2]). As preliminary step of a wider work, we tested and optimized a simpler approach for the acetaminophen determination. The straight use of a glassy carbon electrode in differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) allowed us to achieve a LoD of 9,9×10-8M and a LoQ of 3,3×10-7 M, with a linear range that spans from 1,8×10-7to 1,8×10-4 M. Such analytical parameters are comparable, or even better, to those obtained for the same analyte with electrode surface modification much more sophisticated [3]. The results have shown that an extensive optimization of the DPV parameters and a careful surface cleaning of the electrode surface, before each measurement, can greatly improve the sensitivity of the method.