Determination of bisphenol A, tetrabromobisphenol A and alkylphenols in water samples of sewage treatment plant using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract

Bisphenol A, tetrabromobisphenol A and alkylphenols have received much attention in recent years because of their endocrine disrupting effects to aquatic ecosystem. The fate of these compounds in sewage treatment plant which is important to deal with this kind of compounds has significance on the study of exposure levels of the target compounds in the environment, and the development of analytical method is the basis on the above study. An analytical method based on liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) with negative ionization mode has been developed for measuring bisphenol A, tetrabromobisphenol A and six alkylphenols in raw and treated sewage samples. The target compounds were separated on a ZORBAX Eclipse Plus C18 column (150 mm x 2.1 mm, 3.5 microm) with mobile phases of acetonitril and 0.02% (v/v) ammonia. Analyte confirmations were performed under multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode and the eight compounds were separated within 11 min. The calibration curves were linear in the range of 1 - 100 microg/L (R2 > or = 0.998). The quantification limits of the eight compounds were 2.0 - 20 ng/L. The recovery experiments were performed with samples spiked at the levels of 0.2, 2 and 20 microg/L, and the recoveries for the target compounds were in the range of 64.3%-118.0%, 65.9% - 100.5% and 70.3%-102.7% (RSD < 7.1%, n = 3), respectively. Based on the analytical method, the raw and treated sewage samples from an industrial park of Jiangsu Province were analyzed. Five compounds were detected in the water outlet in the range of 11.9-3 015.3 ng/L. It shows that the method is simple, selective, sensitive and can be used to analyze the water samples of sewage treatment plant containing alkylphenols.