Multiclass method for the determination of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in compost from sewage sludge using ultrasound and salt-assisted liquid–liquid extraction followed by ultrahigh performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry analysis

Multiresidue analytical method for pharmaceuticals and personal care products in sewage and sewage sludge by online direct immersion SPME on-fiber derivatization – GCMS

“…provided coefficients of determination (R 2 ) above 0.99 within the concentration ranges indicated, i.e., up to 5 and 3 orders of magnitude for sewage and sewage sludge, respectively. Similar or poorer linearity ranges have been reported with up to 3 [26] and 6 orders of magnitude [23] in sewage, and up to 2 in sludge [28], compost [3] and fish [7].…”

“…The combination of these two quantification approaches, i.e matrix-matched and internal standard, resulted in a high method reliability. Hence, relative recoveries (Table S4A and S4B), which were determined as the ratio between the absolute recoveries for each compound and the recoveries of their corresponding internal standard, remained above 90% and 70% for sewage and sludge, respectively, which are similar or better than the ones reported in other methodologies for sewage [23,26], sewage sludge [27,28] and other solid environmental matrices recently published [3,7], where recoveries where under 70% for many compounds, especially the most polar/acidic ones.…”

“…In addition, the %RSD values for intraday precision were even lower (Table S4A and S4B). This showed an improved method precision in comparison to previous methodologies for sewage [23,26], sludge [27,28] or other environmental matrices like compost or fish tissue [3,7],…”

“…In this context, Zwiener and Frimmel [1] reported that the analysis of PPCPs has been traditionally dominated by Liquid Chromatography detected by tandem Mass Spectrometric (LC-MS/MS) techniques. Fischer et al [2] recently observed major trends in the use of Ultra High Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC) [3] and High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (HRMS) [4][5][6] like Time Of Flight (TOF) and Orbitrap [7] analyzers. However, these techniques require costly instrumentation not affordable by many laboratories worldwide.…”

Analytical methodologies for the determination of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in sewage sludge: A critical review

“…Ultrasound-assisted extraction (UAE) is an alternative to Soxhlet extraction for solid matrices and has been widely used in PPCP procedures. Some of the latest examples are described in three of the reports reviewed here [28,53,54]. The cavitation of UAE reduces the extraction time in comparison with Soxhlet but, in contrast, it is less reproducible.…”