Screening and Quantification of 65 Organic Pollutants in Drinking Water by Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction-Gas Chromatography-Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

A muti-class method for the analysis of semi-volatile organic pollutants in drinking water in compliance with the European legislation regarding the quality of the waters destined to human consumption and bottled water has been validated. The proposed method analyses and quantifies simultaneously all semi-volatile organic compounds, as all polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and organochlorinated pesticides included in the European Directive 98/83/EC, diverse organic contaminants listed by the US-EPA, polychlorinated biphenyls and diverse organophosphorous and organonitrogenated pesticides. The method has been validated according to ISO/IEC 17025:2005 requirements, following IUPAC and ISO guidelines for the evaluation of the trueness, precision, linearity, specificity, range and uncertainty. The accuracy of the method was tested participating in a proficiency testing scheme for each group of analytes. The method meets all quality requirements established by the directive; the mean recovery ranged between 85 % and 115 %, and the precision, expressed as relative standard deviation, was between 3 % and 23 %. Due to the high sensitivity obtained with the combination of SBSE and triple quadrupole mass spectrometry, a screening method has been proposed that allows the analysis of up to five samples simultaneously, which in combination with the simultaneous analysis of diverse families of analytes, enhances the productivity of the methodology and reduces the costs.