Shimadzu has produced an application note describing the multi-component quantitative analysis of pharmaceuticals in the environment by UHPLC-MS/MS with on-line SPE.
Introduction
Many common drugs can be found in the environment and sometimes even in drinking water. These drugs and their metabolites get into the waste water through excretion via urine or feces and may reach surface water, groundwater and also drinking water after the passage in the sewage treatment plants.
Materials and Methods
This study describes a novel multi-residue UHPLC-MS/MS method that utilizes an online SPE enrichment of the various compounds followed by a fast and optimized chromatographic gradient that results in detection levels of 0.05-2.00 ng/mL. Real river water samples were determined without any sample pretreatment on 17 different pharmaceuticals. The samples were analysed using the high sensitivity triple quadrupole mass spectrometer LCMS-8050 coupled to a NEXERA X2 UHPLC (Shimadzu, Japan) system with four pumps.
Results
By using on-line SPE for the determination of pharmaceutical compounds in water no further sample pre-treatment was necessary. The transition of the low pressure online SPE part of the analysis to the high pressure analytical part could be overcome by using the benefit of the modular design of Shimadzu‘s Nexera X2 series.
Conclusion
Using the benefit of the modular design of Shimadzu’s Nexera X2 combined with the high speed values for MRM recording and the fastest polarity switching time of 5 ms on the Shimadzu LCMS-8050, the difficulties of analysing various classes of compounds in different polarities during one single analysis in sufficient sensitivity could be overcome.
