Multi-residual GC-MS determination of personal care products in waters using solid-phase microextraction

Area of Science:

• Environmental Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Trace Analysis

Background:

• Personal care products (PCPs) are ubiquitous environmental contaminants.
• Their presence in water poses potential ecological and human health risks.
• Simultaneous determination of diverse PCPs at trace levels is analytically challenging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and optimize a multi-residual method for simultaneous determination of 23 PCPs in water.
• To investigate the influence of key operating parameters on extraction efficiency.
• To establish a robust analytical procedure for trace PCPs analysis.

Main Methods:

• One-step solid-phase microextraction (SPME) coupled with Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS).
• Application of chemometric experimental design (Design of Experiments) to optimize SPME parameters.
• Systematic investigation of extraction and desorption temperatures and times.

Main Results:

• Optimized conditions: 90 min extraction at 80 °C, 11 min desorption at 260 °C.
• High extraction recovery for a wide range of PCPs with varying physicochemical properties.
• Excellent analytical performance: high reproducibility (0.01-1.3% RSD intra-day), good linearity, and low detection limits (< 2 ppb for most PCPs).

Conclusions:

• The developed SPME-GC-MS method provides a sensitive and reproducible approach for simultaneous trace analysis of multiple PCPs in water.
• This method offers a valuable tool for environmental monitoring and risk assessment of PCPs.
• The chemometric optimization strategy ensures efficient method development for complex sample matrices.