Fast liquid chromatography–quadrupole-linear ion trap mass spectrometry for the analysis of pharmaceuticals and hormones in water resources

This paper presents the development of a fast multi-residue method for the determination of 49 pharmaceuticals and 6 metabolites from different therapeutic classes in water resources by means of Ultra-performance™ liquid chromatography (UPLC) coupled to tandem mass spectrometry. The use of the UPLC technology enabled all the 55 compounds to be separated chromatographically in less than 9 min (6.3 min positive mode and 2.7 min negative mode) and with a total analysis time of 18 min when considering column conditioning. Improved resolution, sensitivity and a reduction of matrix effects were obtained under these conditions. Unequivocal identification and quantification of the target compounds was also performed by using the dual acquisition modes of the hybrid triple quadrupole-linear ion trap (QqLIT) system. Triple quadrupole mode by means of selected reaction monitoring (SRM) was used for quantification, whilst a second SRM transition together with information-dependent analysis (IDA) experiments was used for confirmation. Additionally, one general, single solid-phase extraction (SPE) method was developed by using Oasis HLB cartridges. Quality parameters of the method in wastewaters were established obtaining a fast, robust, reproducible and cost-effective method for all the target pharmaceuticals. Finally, the optimized SPE-UPLC/QqLIT method was used for the analysis of the target compounds in wastewaters from Spain. Thirty-one out of fifty-five compounds were identified in the samples collected.