Solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is an alternative technique that involves direct extraction of the analytes with the use small-diameter optical fibre that has been coated with a olymeric stationary phase and housed in a syringe assembly or protection. SPME eliminates the separate concentration step rom the SPE and LLE methods because the analytes diffuse irectly into the coating of the SPME device and are oncentrated there. This device is then transferred directly into he injection port of' the gas chromatograph where all the nalytes are thermally desorbed and deposited at the head of the GC column. The SPME process has been described in detail and will not be fully examined here(5), but one aspect of the SPME process, the selection of an appropriate coating, will be discussed in detail in Results.