Applications of LC-MS to quantitation and evaluation of the environmental fate of chiral drugs and their metabolites

This review provides a brief overview on chirality as a structural characteristic of pharmaceuticals. This property has received very little attention in the field of environmental analysis, despite the fact that many drugs are marketed as racemates. The review covers the different methodologies commercially available on chiral liquid chromatography (LC) columns to provide good resolving power. It also reviews recent results obtained in chiral analysis of drugs and their metabolites with an array of modern mass-spectrometric analyzers coupled to an LC system that provides high selectivity and sensitivity. It further covers the occurrence and the fate of chiral drugs in the environment.