Simultaneous determination of parabens, alkylphenols, phenylphenols, bisphenol A and triclosan in human urine, blood and breast milk by continuous solid-phase extraction and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

•A new approach for the GC–MS determination of EDCs in human fluid samples is presented.•Miniaturization of the sample treatment system using a continuous SPE unit.•The proposed method features high sensitivity, and good accuracy and precision.•Successful analysis of human urine, blood and breast milk samples.•MeP, PeP and TCS were detected in virtually all samples.

A highly sensitive gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) method for the determination of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) including parabens, alkylphenols, phenylphenols, bisphenol A and triclosan in human breast milk, blood and urine samples is proposed. Blood and milk require a pretreatment to remove proteins and other substances potentially interfering with the continuous solid-phase extraction (SPE) system used; on the other hand, urine samples can be directly introduced into the system after filtering. Analytes are retained on a LiChrolut EN column and derivatized by silylation following elution with acetonitrile. The resulting trimethylsilyl derivatives are determined by GC–MS. The proposed method exhibited good linearity (r2 > 0.995) for all target EDCs over the concentration range 0.7–10,000 ng/l in urine, and 3.3–50,000 ng/l in blood and milk. Also, it provided low limits of detection (0.2–1.8 ng/l in urine, and 1.0–9.0 ng/l in blood and milk), good precision (relative standard deviations less than 7%) and recoveries from 86 to 104%. A total of 24 human fluid samples were analyzed and most found to contain some target EDC at concentrations from 0.10 to 14 μg/l.

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