Assessment of the Presence of Pharmaceutical Compounds in Seawater Samples from Coastal Area of Gran Canaria Island (Spain)

Abstract

This study presents the evaluation of seven pharmaceutical compounds belonging to different commonly used therapeutic classes in seawater samples from coastal areas of Gran Canaria Island. The target compounds include atenolol (antihypertensive), acetaminophen (analgesic), norfloxacin and ciprofloxacin (antibiotics), carbamazepine (antiepileptic) and ketoprofen and diclofenac (anti-inflammatory). Solid phase extraction (SPE) was used for the extraction and preconcentration of the samples, and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was used for the determination of the compounds. Under optimal conditions, the recoveries obtained were in the range of 78.3% to 98.2%, and the relative standard deviations were less than 11.8%. The detection and quantification limits of the method were in the ranges of 0.1–2.8 and 0.3–9.3 ng·L−1, respectively. The developed method was applied to evaluate the presence of these pharmaceutical compounds in seawater from four outfalls in Gran Canaria Island (Spain) during one year. Ciprofloxacin and norfloxacin were found in a large number of samples in a concentration range of 9.0–3551.7 ng·L−1. Low levels of diclofenac, acetaminophen and ketoprofen were found sporadically.

Selected Pharmaceuticals in Different Aquatic Compartments: Part I—Source, Fate and Occurrence

“…Boxplots with median, maximum and minimum average concentrations of pharmaceuticals in other water bodies. GW-groundwaters, SeaW-seawaters, DW-drinking waters, MinW-mineral waters, Anx-anxiolytics, Antib-antibiotics, Lip reg-lipid regulators, Antiepi-antiepileptics, SSRIs selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, Anti-inf-anti-inflammatories, Horm-hormones and different letters represent significant statistical differences [1,6,82,91,113,128,136,141,145,166,167,174,179,189,193,200,206,209,213,215,217,[225][226][227][228][229][230][231].…”

Detection of Pharmaceutical Residues in Surface Waters of the Eastern Cape Province

“…Pharmaceuticals have been detected in environmental samples such as surface water, groundwater, seawater, sediments and drinking water [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], and they are referred to as emerging contaminants [2,11]. Owing to their broad application in human and veterinary medicine, large amounts of pharmaceuticals are produced yearly [1,11].…”

“…Liquid chromatography mass spectrometry has been a method of preference for analysis of pharmaceuticals in environmental samples [2,6,24,38,39]. This is due to the method being suitable for the analysis of polar organic compounds and offers an advantage of rapid analysis of pharmaceuticals in environmental samples [24,40].…”

Análise de fármacos e metilparabeno em amostras de água do Rio Itapecuru (MA), do Rio Mogi Guaçu (SP) e do Rio Monjolinho e seus tributários (SP)

“…A extração em fase sólida (SPE) tem sido a técnica de extração mais utilizada na análise de PPCPs em amostras de águas superficiais, águas residuárias e águas subterrâneas (14,16,19,20,21,110) . A disseminação do uso da SPE relaciona-se ao fato dessa técnica ser utilizada para uma ampla gama de compostos com propriedades distintas, possuir fator de concentração elevado quando comparada com outras técnicas, ser de fácil automação, apresentar alta recuperação, ser reprodutiva e seletiva.…”

“…Trabalhos desenvolvidos em vários países têm relatado a presença de PPCPs em efluentes de estações de tratamento de esgoto (16,17,18) , em águas superficiais (19) , em água do mar (20,21) e águas subterrâneas (6) . Nesses trabalhos, destacam-se o uso de métodos de análise que utilizam a extração em fase sólida (SPE) e a cromatografia líquida acoplada à espectrometria de massas (LC-MS), operando, principalmente no modo de ionização por electrospray (Electrospray Ionization, ESI) (14,19,20,21) . O uso de analisadores híbridos, como quadrupolo combinado com tempo de voo (QqTOF), também vêm se tornando frequentes, devido a exatidão na determinação das massas dos analitos-alvo e não alvo e a análise full-scan (14,22) .…”