Sulfamethazine (sulfadimidine) residues in Canadian consumer milk

A survey on the presence of sulfamethazine (sulfadimidine) residues in consumer milk has been conducted in 10 cities across Canada. In each city, homogenized milk was purchased at 3 different retail outlets, each supplied by different processing plants. A total of 30 samples was analyzed by a liquid chromatographic method. The limit of quantitation was 5 ppb. In addition to automatic integration, visual inspection of the chromatograms was required to distinguish between low concentrations of sulfamethazine and 2 unknown interfering peaks. Two samples, from different cities, contained 11.4 and 5.24 ppb of the drug. Drug identity was confirmed by mass spectrometry. All other samples appeared to be free of the drug.