A framework for the analysis of polar anticancer drugs in wastewater: On-line extraction coupled to HILIC or reverse phase LC-MS/MS

Abstract

With the consumption of chemotherapy agents, residues of anticancer drugs may be increasingly found in hospital and municipal wastewaters. Quantification of these highly polar micropollutants remains challenging due to poor chromatographic retention on typical reversed phases. This study investigated different solid-phase extraction (SPE) materials for automated on-line preconcentration of complex matrices (hospital and municipal wastewaters) and various chromatographic column options. A hyper crosslinked hydroxylated polystyrene-divinylbenzene copolymer SPE sorbent coupled on-line with hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (HILIC-MS/MS) yielded suitable limits of detection (LOD: 1–2 ng L−1) for 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and 2’,2’-difluorodeoxyuridine (dFdU). Optimization of chromatographic conditions led to a single LC-MS/MS method for the analysis of other cytostatic drugs including cytarabine (CYT), gemcitabine (GEM), methotrexate (MTX), ifosfamide (IFO), cyclophosphamide (CYC) and capecitabine (CAP). The filter membrane for sample pre-treatment, HPLC mobile phase additives, and on-line SPE loading parameters were also investigated. The methods were validated in wastewater matrix with suitable determination coefficients (R2 range: 0.9982–0.9999), LODs (0.5–5 ng L−1), accuracy (78–111%), intraday precision (2.6–12%), and interday precision (2.1–13%). The occurrence of cytostatic drugs was examined in field-collected water samples from hospital effluents and municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) in Canada. CAP (3.7–64 ng L−1), dFdU (6.1–300 ng L−1), and MTX (1.8–68 ng L−1) were frequently detected across both matrix types, while IFO was detected in hospital wastewater (23–140 ng L−1) but not in municipal WWTPs.