Liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry and passive sampling: powerful tools for the determination of emerging pollutants in water for human consumption

Abstract

Among the wide range of emerging pollutants, perfluorinated compounds and various pharmaceuticals, such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, are showing growing concern. These contaminants can be found in freshwater ecosystems because of their incomplete removal during wastewater treatments so, their water solubility and poor degradability result in their continuous discharge and pseudo-persistent contamination. Usually, expected levels of these analytes are particularly low; therefore, sensitive and selective analytical techniques are required for their determination. Moreover, sampling and preconcentration are fundamental steps to reach the low detection limits required. The polar organic chemical integrative sampler (POCIS) represents a modern sampling approach that allows the in-situ preconcentration of ultra-trace pollutants. In this work, a fast liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS/MS) method was developed for the determination of diclofenac, ketoprofen, mefenamic acid, naproxen, ibuprofen, perfluorooctanoic acid, perfluorooctanesulfonate and caffeine in water for human consumption. The chromatographic separation of analytes was achieved in less than 6 min. Quantitative analysis was performed in multiple reaction monitoring mode using ketoprofen-d3 as internal standard. Two different sites of Northern Italy were studied deploying POCIS for four weeks in both inlet and outlet of two drinking water treatment plants. The evaluation of time-weighted average concentration of contaminants was accomplished after the calibration of POCIS; to this aim, the sampling rate values for each compound were obtained by means of a simple calibration system developed in our laboratory. Ketoprofen, perfluorooctane sulfonate, perfluorooctanoate and caffeine were measured in both sites at the ng l(-1) level. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Treatment technologies for emerging contaminants in water: A review

“…Also interestingly, AC originating from waste sources has been reported with noteworthy performance in the removal of some specific ECs such as Paracetamol [48], antibiotics [56], and anti-inflammatory drugs [42].…”

Sampling Rate of Polar Organic Chemical Integrative Sampler (POCIS): Influence Factors and Calibration Methods

“…Numerous experiments have been carried out under laboratory conditions to explore the cumulative dynamics of samplers controlled by water membrane interface. It was found that there was a large deviation in the R s values obtained under in situ and laboratory conditions for the same pollutant [26,49,52]. This variability was mainly due to the diverse environmental conditions that have been poorly explored.…”

“…The summary of R s values from 23 previous studies are presented in Figure 3. The further statistical analysis of data revealed a substantial positive correlation between water flow rate and the R s values due to the rise in diffusion rate and the decrease of WBL thickness by increasing turbulence [13,21,26,27,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59]. Not surprisingly, however, a significant variability was observed in the R s /A values, ranging from 4.73 × 10 −5 to 1.63 × 10 −1 L/cm 2 /d at flow rate from unstirring to 16.75 cm/s since different pH values, various temperatures, and diverse analytes were used in the calibration experiments from the literature [44,53,57,58].…”

“…However, Bartelt et al [26] performed a regression analysis to determine the relationship between molecular mass of compounds and the R s for the neutral compounds; unfortunately, no clear linear correlation was observed between both variables. Additionally, the data summary of the R s values of POCIS determined in 23 previous studies [13,21,26,27,[41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59] for different chemicals with various molecular mass was presented in Figure 4. As expected, a large scattering between R s values and molecular mass was obtained with a relative weak relationship (R 2 = 0.011), which was mainly due to a combined effect of solute-sorbent-solution on the R s value, such as the interaction between chemical function groups of analytes and sorbents.…”

A new analytical workflow using HPLC with drift-tube ion-mobility quadrupole time-of-flight/mass spectrometry for the detection of drug-related metabolites in plants

“…The problem of drug residues in WWTP effluents was addressed in the urban wastewater treatment directive of the EC, which has been continually updated since its release in 1991 [2]. Although WWTPs use several steps for the clean-up of wastewater, namely a pretreatment, a primary, a secondary and/or a tertiary/advanced treatment, contaminants may not be removed completely and can subsequently be found in the effluent [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. This is of particular concern when the treated wastewater is reused, e.g., for irrigation in agriculture, an approach that has become common practice in many arid regions [13].…”