Fast determination of pesticides and other contaminants of emerging concern in treated wastewater using direct injection coupled to highly sensitive ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

•A simple and rapid analytical method using direct sample injection has been validated for the determination of pesticides and contaminants of emerging concern in wastewater samples.•High sensitive LC–QqLIT-MS/MS analysis has been successfully applied.•By direct injection it was possible to detect n...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Chromatography A 2017-07, Vol.1507, p.84-94
Main Authors: Campos-Mañas, Marina Celia, Plaza-Bolaños, Patricia, Sánchez-Pérez, José Antonio, Malato, Sixto, Agüera, Ana
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs)
Direct injection
Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS)
Microcontaminants
Multiresidue analysis
Treated wastewater
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Summary:•A simple and rapid analytical method using direct sample injection has been validated for the determination of pesticides and contaminants of emerging concern in wastewater samples.•High sensitive LC–QqLIT-MS/MS analysis has been successfully applied.•By direct injection it was possible to detect ngL−1 levels in real water samples, up to 67 compounds could be accurately identified and quantified.•The method can be easily implemented in wastewater studies. It is well known that wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents usually contain micropollutants such as pharmaceuticals (or their transformation products, TPs) or pesticides, which is a major issue when evaluating their possible reuse (e.g. for irrigation in agriculture). In search for an improved accuracy and simplicity, methods based on the direct injection of the sample (DI) represent a recent trend taking advantage of the increasing sensitivity of new mass spectrometry (MS) instruments. Thus, the present study shows the development and validation of a DI-based method by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography quadrupole-linear ion trap analyser (UHPLC-QqLIT-MS/MS). The proposed method was applied to the monitoring of 115 organic microcontaminants (including pharmaceuticals, TPs and pesticides) at the ngL−1/μgL−1 level in wastewater effluents from urban WWTPs. Sample pre-treatment was reduced to acetonitrile addition and filtration of the mixture previous to LC–MS analysis. Total analysis time was
ISSN:0021-9673
DOI:10.1016/j.chroma.2017.05.053