Authors: Leendert Vergeynst Herman Van Langenhove Pieter Joos Kristof Demeestere
Publish Date: 2014/03/16
Volume: 406, Issue: 11, Pages: 2533-2547
Abstract
The evergrowing number of emerging micropollutants such as pharmaceuticals requests rapid and sensitive fullspectrum analytical techniques Timeofflight highresolution mass spectrometry TOFHRMS is a promising alternative for the stateoftheart tandem mass spectrometry instruments because of its ability to simultaneously screen for a virtually unlimited number of suspect analytes and to perform target quantification The challenge for such suspect screening is to develop a strategy which minimizes the falsenegative rate without restraining numerous falsepositives At the same time omitting laborious sample enrichment through largevolume injection ultraperformance liquid chromatography LVIUPLC avoids selective preconcentration A suspect screening strategy was developed using LVIUPLCTOFMS aiming the detection of 69 multiclass pharmaceuticals in surface water without the a priori availability of analytical standards As a novel approach the screening takes into account the signalintensitydependent accurate mass error of TOFMS hereby restraining 95 of the measured suspect pharmaceuticals present in surface water Application on five Belgian river water samples showed the potential of the suspect screening approach as exemplified by a falsepositive rate not higher than 15 and given that 30 out of 37 restrained suspect compounds were confirmed by the retention time of analytical standards Subsequently this paper discusses the validation and applicability of the LVIUPLC fullspectrum HRMS method for target quantification of the 69 pharmaceuticals in surface water Analysis of five Belgian river water samples revealed the occurrence of 17 pharmaceuticals in a concentration range of 17 ng L−1 up to 31 μg L−1The variability of the mass error decreases inversely with the logtransformed signal intensity The signalintensitydependent accurate mass error was taken into account in a new suspect screening assuring that 95 of the measured compounds are restrainedThe authors acknowledge Els Van Meenen and Paul Ackermans from Waterlink AWW for their support We also thank Waters for the use of the UPLC system and the Xevo G2 QTOF mass spectrometer and for their support The Special Research Fund BOF 11/STA/027 of the Ghent University is acknowledged for their financial support
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