Monitoring the Presence of 13 Active Compounds in Surface Water Collected from Rural Areas in Northwestern Spain

Abstract

Drug residues are considered environmental contaminants, and their occurrence has recently become a matter of concern. Analytical methods and monitoring systems are therefore required to control the continuous input of these drug residues into the environment. This article presents a suitable HPLC-ESI-MS/MS method for the simultaneous extraction, detection and quantification of residues of 13 drugs (antimicrobials, glucocorticosteroids, anti-inflammatories, anti-hypertensives, anti-cancer drugs and triphenylmethane dyes) in surface water. A monitoring study with 549 water samples was carried out in northwestern Spain to detect the presence of drug residues over two sampling periods during 2010, 2011 and 2012. Samples were collected from rural areas with and without farming activity and from urban areas. The 13 analytes were detected, and 18% of the samples collected showed positive results for the presence of at least one analyte. More collection sites were located in rural areas than in urban areas. However, more positive samples with higher concentrations and a larger number of analytes were detected in samples collected from sites located after the discharge of a WWTP. Results indicated that the WWTPs seems to act as a concentration point. Positive samples were also detected at a site located near a drinking water treatment plant.

Occurrence of anticancer drugs in the aquatic environment: a systematic review

“…3). Results showed that the concentrations of anticancer drugs can fluctuate if the sampling was near the hospital or in rural or urban areas (Iglesias et al 2014). Also, results changed according to the Fig.…”

Development and validation of a single HPLC method for the determination of thirteen pharmaceuticals in bulk and tablet dosage form

“…Many authors have described the determination of pharmaceuticals in pure, tablet dosage form and real sample using a range of analytical techniques. Analytical techniques including liquid chromatography (LC) and gas chromatography (GC) are commonly employed for the separation and determination of compounds in mixtures, but liquid chromatography is mostly used to determine pharmaceuticals, since they are mostly non-volatile [20,21]. Liquid chromatographic methods for amoxicillin [22], alebendazole [23], chloroquine [24], acetylsalicylic acid [16], caffeine [25], metronidazole [26], theophylline [27] and ciprofloxacin [28] have been reported.…”

Salting-out assisted liquid–liquid extraction for the determination of ciprofloxacin residues in water samples by high performance liquid chromatography–diode array detector

“…Determination of pharmaceuticals in different water samples can be performed by various chromatographic techniques, including HPLC–UV [24], HPLC–DAD [25, 26], LC–MS [27], LC–MS/MS [28, 29] and GC–MS [30, 31]. HPLC is the most common method used for separation and determination of these compounds because most pharmaceuticals are non-volatile [12].…”

“…As the residue of pharmaceutical compounds is usually present at very low concentrations in the environmental water, a sample preparation and pre-concentration step are necessary before analysis [23, 32]. Several procedures have been reported for the pre-concentration of pharmaceuticals from water matrices including solid phase extraction (SPE) [27, 33], liquid–liquid extraction (LLE) [34], QuEChERS method [35], magnetic solid phase extraction (MSPE) [36], hollow fiber liquid phase microextraction [37] and salting-out assisted liquid–liquid extraction for non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) [38]. Each of these methods has its own advantages and disadvantages.…”