Simultaneous determination of ultra-trace pesticides and synthetic materials in surface water by LC-ESI-MS/MS

Abstract

A liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry method (LC-ESI-MS/MS) was used for determining seven pesticides (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, methomyl, aldicarb, 2-methyl- 4-chlorophenoxy- acetic acid, molinate, carbaryl and carbofuran) and two synthetic materials (quinoline and bisphenol-A) in surface water. The analytes were extracted using solid-phase extraction (SPE). The eluate was concentrated by nitrogen gas. 100 microliters of 30% (v/v) methanol aqueous solution were used to dissolve the residue and an aliquot of the reconstituted solution was directly injected into LC-ESI-MS/MS after the filtration using 0.2 μm polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) syringe filter. Under the established condition, the calibration curves of the analytes were linear with correlation coefficients of above 0.997. The quantification limit was 0.002∼0.011 μg/L and the relative standard deviations were less than 16.4%. In addition, accuracy was in the range of 84∼107% and the recoveries were values between 56.2 and 98.6%. In this study, the developed method was applied to the analysis of real surface water samples.