Column-switching reversed phase–hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry method for determination of free estrogens and their conjugates in river water

We report a column-switching liquid chromatography (LC) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) method for highly sensitive determination of both free estrogens (estrone, estradiol, and estriol) and their conjugates (estrone-3-sulfate, estradiol-3-sulfate, estriol-3-sulfate, estrone-3-glucuronide, estradiol-3-glucuronide, estriol-16-glucuronide, and estriol-3-glucuronide) in river water. This technique combines reversed phase (RP) chromatographic separation of the dansyl chloride derivatized free estrogens and hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatographic (HILIC) separation of the estrogen conjugates with multiple reaction monitoring (MRM). Using this new method, sensitivity increases 100- to 1000-fold for free estrogens and 2- to 10-fold for estrogen conjugates over RPLC–MS/MS alone. Method detection limits (MDL) range from 0.038 to 6.9 ng L−1 with accuracy of 68–105% and precision of 1.7–17%. We successfully used this method to analyze river water samples collected from the North Saskatchewan River at the same location and detected trace concentrations of estrone (0.042 ng L−1) and estrone-3-sulfate (0.84 ng L−1), demonstrating the application of this method for environmental analysis.