Determination of four bisphenol environmental hormone residues in infant serum by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

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Bisphenols are important industrial raw materials that are widely used to produce plastic bottles (feeding bottles), infant cups, and food and beverage (milk powder) cans. Because of the estrogen-like effect of bisphenols, even low-dose intake of these compounds by trace migration affects normal hormone levels in the human body. Therefore, it is imperative to develop a rapid, accurate, and highly sensitive method for the determination of bisphenols in serum. In this study, methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) was used as the extraction solvent, and the liquid-liquid extraction pretreatment method was used for sample processing. A high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) method was established for the simultaneous determination of bisphenol A (BPA), bisphenol B (BPB), bisphenol F (BPF), and bisphenol S (BPS) at trace levels in infant serum. The important parameters affecting the extraction efficiency, such as the extraction solvent, extraction time, and extraction solvent volume for the four bisphenol environmental hormones were optimized. Serum samples were extracted by MTBE at 40℃ for 15 min. The target compounds were separated on a Waters ACQUITY UPLC BEH C18 column (50 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) using ultrapure water and methanol solution containing 0.5 mmol/L ammonium acetate as the mobile phases, with gradient elution at a flow rate of 0.2 mL/min. Finally, the analytes were analyzed by HPLC-MS/MS in the negative ion mode. BPA, BPB, and BPS showed good linearity in the range of 0.25-100 μg/L, while BPF showed good linearity in the range of 1-100 μg/L. The correlation coefficients were 0.9929-0.9959, and the limits of detection for BPA, BPB, BPS, and BPF were 0.05, 0.05, 0.05, 0.5 μg/L, respectively. At the three spiked levels (5, 20, 100 μg/L), the average recoveries of BPA, BPB, BPS, and BPF ranged from 84.56% to 104.43%, and the relative standard deviations were less than 10%. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of bisphenol contents in 150 infant serum samples. BPA was detected in most serum samples, and the detection rates in the serum of boys and girls were 90.67% and 89.33%, respectively. The detection rates of BPF in the serum of boys and girls were 6.67% and 1.33%, respectively; the corresponding values for BPS were 5.33% and 16.00%. BPB was not detected. The proposed method has the advantages of simple operation, good recovery, and high precision, and it is suitable for the simultaneous determination of the four bisphenol environmental hormones in infant serum.