A low-cost eco-friendly fast drug extraction (FaDEx) technique for environmental and bio-monitoring of psychoactive drug in urban water and sports-persons' urine samples

Swapnil Gurrani; Karthikeyan Prakasham; Jess Lim Zii Ying; Jentaie Shiea; Yi-Jia Ku; Yu-Chia Lin; Po-Chin Huang; Gangadhar Andaluri; Kung-Che Lee; Vinoth Kumar Ponnusamy

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2022.114787

A low-cost eco-friendly fast drug extraction (FaDEx) technique for environmental and bio-monitoring of psychoactive drug in urban water and sports-persons' urine samples

Environ Res. 2023 Jan 15:217:114787. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.114787. Epub 2022 Nov 19.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Research Center for Precision Environmental Medicine, and Ph.D. Program in Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU), Kaohsiung City, 807, Taiwan.
² Department of Medicinal and Applied Chemistry, Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU), Kaohsiung City, 807, Taiwan.
³ Research Center for Precision Environmental Medicine, and Ph.D. Program in Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU), Kaohsiung City, 807, Taiwan; Department of Medicinal and Applied Chemistry, Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU), Kaohsiung City, 807, Taiwan; Department of Chemistry, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung City, 804, Taiwan.
⁴ Research and Development Division, Great Engineering Technology (GETECH) Corporation, No.392, Yucheng Rd., Zuoying District., Kaohsiung City, 813, Taiwan.
⁵ Research Center for Precision Environmental Medicine, and Ph.D. Program in Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU), Kaohsiung City, 807, Taiwan; National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes (NHRI), Miaoli County, 35053, Taiwan.
⁶ Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, College of Engineering, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, United States.
⁷ Department of Athletic Performace, National University of Kaohsiung, Kaohsiung City, 811, Taiwan. Electronic address: t9708@nuk.edu.tw.
⁸ Research Center for Precision Environmental Medicine, and Ph.D. Program in Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU), Kaohsiung City, 807, Taiwan; Department of Medicinal and Applied Chemistry, Kaohsiung Medical University (KMU), Kaohsiung City, 807, Taiwan; Department of Chemistry, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung City, 804, Taiwan; Department of Medical Research, Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital (KMUH), Kaohsiung City, 807, Taiwan. Electronic address: kumar@kmu.edu.tw.

PMID: 36410459
DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.114787

Abstract

Nicotine is the most prominent psychoactive/addictive chemical substance consumed worldwide among young players in team sports. Moreover, urinary nicotine discharge and nicotine-based products disposal in environmental waters has been unavoidable in recent years. Therefore, sensitive monitoring of nicotine content in environmental waters and human urine samples is essential. In this study, we developed a miniaturized novel green, low-cost, sensitive, in-syringe-based semi-automated fast drug extraction (FaDEx) protocol coupled with gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID) for the efficient environmental and bio-monitoring of nicotine in aqueous samples. The FaDEx method consists of two steps; firstly, the target analyte was extracted using dimethyl carbonate (a green solvent) and extraction salts. After that, the extraction solvent was passed automatically through the solid-phase extraction cartridge at a constant flow rate for the cleanup process to achieve the sensitive nicotine analysis by GC-FID. Under optimized experimental conditions, the developed method showed excellent linearity over the concentration ranges between 20-2000 ng mL^-1 with a correlation coefficient >0.99. The detection and quantification limits were 4 and 20 ng mL^-1, respectively. The presented method was applied to monitor and assess nicotine exposure in sports-persons' urine and environmental water samples. The method accuracy and precision in terms of relative recovery and relative standard deviation (for triplicate analysis) were 85.4-110.2% and ≤8%, respectively. Finally, the impact of our procedure on the environment from a green analytical chemistry view was assessed using a novel metric system called AGREE, and obtained the greenness score of 0.87, indicating its an efficient alternative green analytical protocol for routine environmental and bio-monitoring of nicotine in environmental and biological samples.

Keywords: Bio-monitoring; Environmental monitoring; GC-FID; Human urine; Psychoactive drug; Urban water.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Biological Monitoring
Humans
Limit of Detection
Nicotine* / analysis
Psychotropic Drugs / analysis
Solid Phase Extraction / methods
Solvents
Water*

Substances

Nicotine
Water
Solvents
Psychotropic Drugs