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Simultaneous determination of parabens, triclosan and triclocarban in water by liquid chromatography/electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry
Author(s) -
GonzálezMariño Iria,
Quintana José Benito,
Rodríguez Isaac,
Cela Rafael
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
rapid communications in mass spectrometry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.528
H-Index - 136
eISSN - 1097-0231
pISSN - 0951-4198
DOI - 10.1002/rcm.4069
Subject(s) - chemistry , triclocarban , chromatography , triclosan , mass spectrometry , liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry , electrospray ionization , tandem mass spectrometry , triple quadrupole mass spectrometer , electrospray , paraben , extraction (chemistry) , solid phase extraction , elution , detection limit , matrix (chemical analysis) , selected reaction monitoring , preservative , medicine , food science , pathology
A method for the determination of several household biocides in water by liquid chromatography/electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry (LC/ESI‐MS/MS) is presented. It permits the simultaneous determination of triclosan (TCS), triclocarban (TCC) and seven parabens, including the distinction between branched and linear isomers of propyl ( i ‐PrP and n ‐PrP) and butyl parabens ( i ‐BuP and n ‐BuP). Prior to LC/MS/MS, analytes are preconcentrated by solid‐phase extraction (SPE) on Oasis HLB (60 mg) cartridges at natural sample pH and subsequently eluted with 4 mL of methanol. This simple SPE procedure provides extraction recoveries above 85% except for raw wastewater, where it falls to 65% for TCC. The performance of the method was tested with two triple‐quadrupole LC/MS instruments from a low/mid and mid/high market range: a Varian 1200L and an API‐4000. The latter system provided between 3 and 80 times lower limits of quantification (LOQs) than the first one, in the 0.08–0.44 ng/L range for surface water. Moreover, a comparison of matrix effects on both instruments showed a very different behaviour, particularly in the case of parabens. For these compounds signal suppression was observed in the 1200L instrument and signal enhancement with the 4000 instrument. As a result, different calibration approaches were chosen for them and this pointed to the need of matrix effect re‐evaluation in method transfer between different LC/MS systems. The application of the method to real samples showed the ubiquity of methyl paraben (MeP) and n ‐PrP (at the 1–6 µg/L in raw wastewater) and the coexistence of i ‐BuP and n ‐BuP at similar levels (ca. 100–200 ng/L in raw wastewater). Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.