Solid‐phase Extraction Coupled Simple On‐line Derivatization Gas Chromatography – Tandem Mass Spectrometry for the Determination of Benzophenone‐type UV Filters in Aqueous Samples

Abstract

The rapid determination of three benzophenone-type UV filters: 2-hydroxy-4-methoxy-benzophenone (BP-3), 2,4-dihydroxybenzophenone (BP-1) and 2,2¢-dihydroxy-4-methoxy-benzophenone (BP-8), in aqueous samples is described. The method involved the extraction of an aqueous sample using an Oasis HLB solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridge, followed by on-line derivatization gas chromatography -tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) with a trimethylsilylating (TMS) reagent. This eco-friendly, injection-port derivatization method, is sensitive, rapid, and provides reproducible results for these hydroxylated benzophenones in aqueous samples. The limits of quantitation (LOQs) were determined to be 1.0 to 2.5 ng/L for samples in 100 mL of water. The precision for these analytes, as indicated by relative standard deviations (RSDs), proved to be less than 11% for both intra-and inter-day analysis. Accuracy, expressed as the mean extraction yield, was between 80 and 106%. The method was then applied to some environmental water samples, river water and samples of effluents from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), having the potential to contain BP-3 and BP-1.

Advances in analytical methods and occurrence of organic UV-filters in the environment — A review

“…Then, heavy rain might be able to leach chemicals and transport them directly or adsorbed on particles into groundwater (Arukwe et al, 2012). UV-filters are either not found in groundwatet (Ho and Ding, 2012;Wick et al, 2010) or found at very low concentrations (0.38 -36.6 ng/L) (Arukwe et al, 2012;Jurado et al, 2014). Considering the mixing of the different sources that contribute to the occurrence of the UV-filters in groundwater, these concentrations are below the expected.…”

“…However, polymeric reversed phase sorbents (hydrophobic), with no bonded phase or alkyl ligands, water wettable, were also used (Rodil et al, 2012;Ho and Ding, 2012). This type of sorbents is suitable for applications with target compounds over a wide range of chemical properties like the UV-filters under study (Arukwe et al, 2012;Liu et al, 2011).…”

“…Furthermore, the derivatisation increases the molecular weight of relatively low weight molecules. As a result, the interference of endogenous materials is prevented by increasing the retention times during the reversed-phase chromatographic run (Ho and Ding, 2012). Several reagents have been steadily developed for this purpose, such as N-methyl-N-(trimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide (MSTFA) (Jeon et al, 2006;Negreira et al, 2009;Zhang and Lee, 2012a), N,O-bis(trimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide (BSTFA) (Román et al, 2011;Tarazona et al, 2010) and N-methyl-N-(tert-butyldimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide (MTB-STFA) (Negreira et al, 2008).…”

Optimization of dispersive micro solid-phase extraction for the rapid determination of benzophenone-type ultraviolet absorbers in aqueous samples

“…Among them, solid-phase extraction (SPE) is most commonly used for the extraction of these target analytes from aqueous samples [1,2,7,[9][10][11]. However, the sample loading step for a cartridge SPE requires a relatively long period of time, irrespective of whether the loading is performed by gravity flow or pressure/vacuum-assisted.…”

“…Due to their excessive use, they are now present in a wide variety of environmental samples, including in swimming pool and surface water [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], wastewater [2,[6][7][8]11], sea water [12], fish [1,13], and have even been detected in various human specimens, such as urine, breast milk, serum/blood and placental tissue, as recently reviewed by Jiménez-Díaz et al [14]. Moreover, benzophenone-type UV absorbers have been reported to have the potential to function as endocrine disrupters in various organisms [15][16][17], and could result in negative effects in humans [18].…”