Potentially toxic organic and inorganic compounds have been released into the environment by different sources. Due to this detrimental problem, the modern analytical chemistry has increasingly acted in the interface of knowledge in terms of developing methods which are robust, efficient, sensitive, inexpensive, and aim at meeting green chemistry principles. From an electroanalytical standpoint, the application of polysaccharides derived from natural sources in the development of chemically modified electrodes has increased in the last decades. Chitosan, cellulose and other polysaccharides have been widely used in the development of modified electrodes due to their high mechanical strength, relatively low cost, and green features. Several studies have reported in the past few years that chemically modified electrodes elaborated with these polysaccharides usually present superior analytical properties as compared to the conventional electrodes. This review describes the general aspects of these polysaccharides, extraction sources, characterization methods, derivatives and crosslinking processes as well as a comprehensive overview of their several applications in the development of new sensors applied to environmental samples.

潜在的有毒有机和无机化合物已通过不同来源释放到环境中。由于这个有害的问题，现代分析化学在开发可靠，有效，灵敏，廉价且旨在满足绿色化学原理的方法方面，越来越多地在知识的界面上起作用。从电分析的角度来看，近几十年来，源自自然来源的多糖在化学修饰电极的开发中的应用有所增加。壳聚糖，纤维素和其他多糖由于具有较高的机械强度，相对较低的成本和绿色特性，已被广泛用于修饰电极的开发中。过去几年中已有几项研究报道，用这些多糖制成的化学修饰电极通常比常规电极具有更好的分析性能。这篇综述描述了这些多糖的一般方面，提取来源，表征方法，衍生物和交联过程，以及它们在开发应用于环境样品的新型传感器中的几种应用的全面概述。