Cigarette filters as adsorbents of solid-phase extraction for determination of fluoroquinolone antibiotics in environmental water samples coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography

► The potential use of the cigarette filter as a SPE adsorbent and its application in extraction of fluoroquinolones (FQs) antibacterial agents prior to liquid chromatography was examined for the first time. ► The detection limits of 2-5 ng L−1 FQs were obtained with a dynamic detection range from 0.017 μg L−1 to 20 μg L−1 with correlation coefficients between 0.9947 and 0.9996 when 500 mL of water sample was processed. ► Compared with other commercially available packing materials, cigarette filter is much cheaper and more easily available, and is a kind of promising adsorbents for effective extraction of FQs in environmental water samples.