Universal method to determine acidic licit and illicit drugs and personal care products in water by liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight

Eric Carmona,María Jesús Andrés-Costa,Yolanda Picó

doi:10.1016/j.mex.2016.04.004

Eric Carmona, María Jesús Andrés-Costa

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mex.2016.04.004

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Abstract

Pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs and personal care products are emerging contaminants widely distributed in water. Currently, a number of solid-phase extraction (SPE) procedures followed by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) have been reported. However, target analysis of selected compounds is commonly used whereas other related contaminants present in the sample remain invisible. Carmona et al. [1] described a method for determining 21 emerging contaminants by LC–MS/MS with improved mobile phases. We tested this protocol in combination with high resolution mass spectrometry using a quadrupole time-of-flight (QqTOF) instrument to get a wide non-target screening approach in order to have a broader scope and more practical method for detecting licit and illicit drugs and personal care products than traditional target methods. The essential points in the method are:•The screening capabilities of QqTOF (ABSciex Triple TOF™) are used for detecting and identifying non-target pharmaceuticals and a large number of other emerging contaminants in water.•The quantitative features of the instrument, the Achilles heel of the QqTOF mass spectrometers, are established for few selected compounds.•The method may be applied to identify a large number of emerging contaminants in water. However, pre-validation will be needed to quantify them.

Highlights

There are hundreds, even thousands of emerging contaminants that can occur in water.Traditionally, the scheme used for their determination involves generic sample preparation procedures able to extract almost any of them, and target determination for the unique and highly specific detection of the selected contaminant(s) [3,4,5]
We proposed a procedure to analyse pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, personal care products and others contaminants on different water matrices through a common method for a triple quadrupole (QqQ) and a quadrupole time-offlight (QqTOF) mass spectrometers
Linearity: linear coefficients (R2) were 0.99 in all cases, except for salicylic acid (R2 0.98); limit of quantification (LOQ) was established as the concentration that, after extraction, gives a UHPLC peak height value 1.0 104; Recoveries and relative standard deviations (RSDs) of selected compounds were calculated in samples spiked at 100 ng L 1 subtracting the peak areas corresponding to native analytes in the sample and tested in quintuplicate; Matrix effect was evaluated by comparing the slope of the calibration curves obtained for spiked influent, effluent or surface water extracts with the slope of that obtained for standard prepared in water-methanol (70:30, v/v) spiked at the same level

Summary

Introduction

There are hundreds, even thousands of emerging contaminants that can occur in water.Traditionally, the scheme used for their determination involves generic sample preparation procedures able to extract almost any of them, and target determination for the unique and highly specific detection of the selected contaminant(s) [3,4,5]. The screening capabilities of QqTOF (ABSciex Triple TOFTM) are used for detecting and identifying non-target pharmaceuticals and a large number of other emerging contaminants in water.

Results

Conclusion