Objective: To establish a method for simultaneous determination of 21 organophosphate esters(OPEs) and their metabolites in drinking water by automatic solid phase extraction-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.
Methods: The drinking water was purified by automatic solid phase extraction with HLB column, eluted by methanol, determined by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry with ACQUITY UPLC BEH(100 mm×2.1mm, 1.7 μm) column, and quantified by internal standard method.
Results: The optimized method could simultaneously detect 21 organophosphate esters and their metabolites in drinking water. The detection limit was 0.01-0.24 ng/L, the quantitation limit was 0.03-0.77 ng/L. The recovery range was 57.6%-121.2% and the relative standard deviation is 1.2%-11.1% when the concentration was 0.8-20 ng/L. Senventeen tap water and 30 packaged drinking water collected by the supermarket were measured. The ΣOPEs range was 16.8-177 ng/L, and the Σdi-OPEs range was 0.328-16.3ng/L, indicating the exposure risk of organophosphates and their metabolites in water.
Conclusion: The pretreatment of the method is simple, automatic and sensitive, and is suitable for simultaneous high-throughput determination of organophosphate esters and their metabolites in large quantities of drinking water.
Keywords: drinking water; liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry; metabolites; organophosphate esters.