Simultaneous determination of seven bisphenols in environmental water and solid samples by liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract

This article presents a simple and universal analytical method for the simultaneous analysis of bisphenol S (BPS), bisphenol F (BPF), bisphenol A (BPA), bisphenol B (BPB), bisphenol AF (BPAF), tetrachlorobisphenol A (TCBPA), and tetrabromobisphenol A (TBBPA) in environmental water (river water, sewage) and solid samples (sediment, sludge) based on liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Analytes were extracted from water samples using hydrophilic lipophilic balanced (HLB) solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridges, and the extracts were further purified using MAX SPE cartridges. For the solid samples, a combination of ultrasonic extraction with the same SPE clean-up procedures used for the water samples was employed. The absolute recoveries for all analytes in the water and solid samples ranged from 57.1 to 114.3%. Good method reproducibility was achieved in terms of intra- and inter-day precision, yielding relative standard deviations (RSDs) less than 16.9 and 18.1%, respectively. The method limits of quantitation (MLOQ) for the seven compounds in environmental water and solid samples ranged from 0.05 to 4.35ng/L and from 0.06 to 2.83ng/g (dry weight, d.w.), respectively. Finally, this method was successfully applied to real environmental sample analysis, which revealed that all of the tested BPs were present, with the exception of BPB.

Keywords: Bisphenols; Environmental water; Liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry; Sludge; Solid-phase extraction.