Simultaneous determination of benzothiazoles, benzotriazoles and benzosulfonamides by solid phase microextraction-gas chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry in environmental aqueous matrices and human urine

This work proposes a new approach for the simultaneous determination of benzothiazoles, benzotriazoles and benzosulfonamides in different environmental matrices and human urine, using solid-phase microextraction coupled with gas-chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (SPME-GC-QqQMS). The analytes object of this investigation have been classified as toxic to aquatic organisms and their presence in human urine was reported to occur as result of human exposure to contaminated environment. In this work many of the challenges related to the chemical diversity and polarity of the analytes selected were overcame conducting a multivariate optimization of the working conditions by using the approach of “Experimental design”. Tests performed to assess the performances of five SPME coatings in direct immersion mode revealed the polyacrylate coating to be the most suitable for the extraction of the probe analytes. A central composite design (CCD) was employed to determine the optimal conditions for four factors affecting the solid-phase microextraction process: extraction time, extraction temperature, pH and percentage of sodium chloride. The optimal working condition determined by using Derringer's desirability function were 40 min as extraction time, pH 7.1 and 6.0% of NaCl. Since the extraction temperature do not significantly affects the responses for all the analytes considered, analyses were performed at room temperature. A careful evaluation of the matrix effect for all the matrices tested was carried out. The results obtained showed that the proposed method did not significantly influenced by matrix effects in most of the cases tested, and thus allows the use of simplified calibration procedure. Satisfactory values of accuracy and precision were also obtained for all the matrices considered.