| The presence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the environment has become an emerging concern over the years. These compounds make their way into the environment from various sources such as sewage, industrial effluents, and agricultural runoffs. The aim of this study was to monitor these compounds as they traveled from wastewater sources to surface waters and to the soil. However, the method that was being used initially for the analysis of these compounds did not show the expected sensitivity. This let this study to deviate its focus to determine the source of the problem and a study was conducted on the ionization efficiency of ibuprofen in order to improve the method. Experiments show that, for ibuprofen, the signal was improved significantly when using an ESI source in the negative mode along with a solvent system composed of 1:1 MeOH/ACN and using 0.1% acetic acid as the buffering agent. The method detection limit (MDL) obtained for ibuprofen using this method was 0.7967 ng/L indicating that the source of the problem was indeed caused by poor ionization of the analyte, and that the method can be used to analyze PPCPs at trace concentrations. Analysis of real world samples proved difficult due to signal suppression of the internal standard and ibuprofen, but it is expected that with proper cleaning of the samples accurate results could be obtained. |
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