A LC-MS/MS Method Developed To Detect 32 Drugs In Water Sampled From Selected Drain Outlets And Estuaries Of The Bohai Sea

Drugs are chemicals that prevent, diagnose and treat diseases by affecting the biochemical, physiological and pathological processes of the body. There are many kinds of drugs, including analgesics, cold medicine, antibiotics, antihypertensive drugs, etc.At present, the main contributors to the contamination of the drugs are the antibiotics. Therefore, studies on analization of drugs are focused on the antibiotics, and non-antibiotic drugs are usually be neglected. However, some non-antibiotic drugs, such as antipyretic analgesic drugs, antilipemic drugs etc., were also dectected in the water body of China. Therefore, antibiotics as well as non-antibiotic drugs,32 species in total, were analyzed in this study. A method of solid-phase extraction combined with high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (SPE-HPLC-MS/MS) was developed to detect the 32 drugs in water sampled from drain outlets and estuaries of the three bays of the Bohai Sea. Drugs in the water were enriched and cleaned-up by solid-phase extraction cartridges and then analyzed by LC-MS\MS. The mobile phases of LC were 0.1%(v:v) formic acid-1 g/L ammonium formate aqueous and acetonitrile, and mass detector was perfomed at multi reaction monitoring mode (MRM). With this method, the standard addition recoveries ranged from 56.67% to 140.56% and method detection limits were in the range of 0.0012?2.6390 ng/L.32 samples collected from the drain outlets and estuaries around Liaodong Bay, Bohai Bay and Laizhou Bay were analysed by this method. As a result, concentrations of the 18 samples from the Liaodong Bay, ranged from 0.001?g/L to 1446.270?g/L. Roxithromycin was the most frequently detected compound with the detection rate of 89% and Terramycin showed the highest detectable concentration of 1446.270?g/L. Concentrations of the 14 samples from the Bohai and Laizhou Bay, ranged from 0.001?g/L to 149.034?g/L. Roxithromycin, Lincomycin and Carbamazepine showed the highest and same detection rate of 85.71%, and Doxycycline had the highest detectable concentration of 149.034?g/L. As compared to Liaodong Bay, drugs concentrations in drain outlets and estuaries of Bohai Bay and Laizhou Bay were generally lower.