An efficient resin for solid-phase extraction and determination by UPLCMS/MS of 44 pharmaceutical personal care products in environmental waters

Highlights

• A hydrophilic resin (GCHM) was facile synthesis and characterized.

• Average absolute recovery of GCHM (75.6%) performs better than Oasis^® HLB.

• Detection limits of method (SPE-UPLC-MS/MS) ranged between 0.03 and 0.6 ng/L.

• 22 PPCPs were determined in environmental waters ranging from 0.5 to 1590 ng/L.

Abstract

In this study, a hydrophilic resin named GCHM was fabricated based on poly(N-vinyl pyrrolidone-co-divinylbenzene), characterized, and applied as a solid-phase extraction (SPE) material. Up to 44 pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) belonging to 10 classes were recovered in environmental water samples. Different variables affecting extraction, such as adsorbent amount, sample pH, and loading speed, were optimized. Under optimal conditions, the average absolute recovery of 44 PPCPs was 75.6% using GCHM, indicating a better performance than the commercial Oasis^® HLB. SPE with home-made hydrophilic polymeric sorbent followed by ultra-performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry was validated, and the method achieved good linearity (r²>0.991, for all analytes). In addition, the method detection limits of target compounds ranged from 0.03 to 0.6 ng/L. The developed method was applied to determine PPCPs in 10 environmental water samples taken from the Yangtze River, Huaihe River, and Taihu Lake, 1 groundwater sample from Changzhou in Jiangsu Province, 1 wastewater sample from Xiamen and 2 seawater samples from the Jiulong River in Fujian Province, China. In these samples, 22 compounds were determined at levels ranging from 0.5 to 1590 ng/L.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Hydrophilic resin / Solid phase extraction / Pharmaceuticals and personal care product / Ultra-performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry / Environmental water

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Acknowledgements

Authors gratefully acknowledge the generous support provided by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFE0112300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51678290, 51438008 and 51778281), Jiangsu Natural Science Fund, China (No. BK20171342), Jiangsu Provincial Key Medical Discipline (Laboratory) of China (No. ZDXKA2016008), Jiangsu Preventive Medicine Project of China (No. Y2018081). The authors also thank Dr. Zhe Wang from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) for his support on this project.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-020-1228-y and is accessible for authorized users.

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