Determination of Steroid Estrogens in Wastewater by Immunoaffinity Extraction Coupled withHPLC-Electrospray-MS
Ferguson PL, Iden CR, McElroy AE, Brownawell BJ. 2001. Determination of Steroid Estrogens in Wastewater by Immunoaffinity Extraction Coupled withHPLC-Electrospray-MS. Analytical Chemistry. 73(16):3890-3895
A newmethod, basedonimmunoaffinity extraction coupled with liquid chromatogiaphy/dectrospray mass spectrom etry (LC/ESI-MS) is described for the determination of the steroid estrogens ^-estradiol (E2), estrone (El), and a-ethynylestradiol (E2) in wastewater. The use of highly selective immunosorbents in sample preparation priorto analysis allows the removal of interfering sample matrix compounds present in the wastewater extracts thatwould otherwise cause severe ionization suppression of the estrogens during the electrospray process. In addition, immunoextraction removes much of the isobaric noise from the selectedion monitoring chromatograms, increas ingdie signal-to-noise ratios for analytes, andcontributing to the low detection limits (0.18 and 0.07 ng/L for E2 and El, respectively) achieved by the current method. The method was applied to analysis of estrogens in two wastewater effluents. Recoveries of E2 and El were excellent(>90%), whilethe nonimmunogen (but structur ally related) analyte EE2 was notretained (recovery <2%) from effluent extracts by the immunosorbent This il lustrates the extreme selectivity of the immunoextraction purification step. Precision ofthe methodwashigh, with relative standard deviations below 5%. Concentrations of E2 in wastewater varied from 0.77 to 6.4 ng/L, while concentrations of El were greater (1.6-18 ng/L).
- Type
- Journal Article
- Authors
- Ferguson, P.; Iden, Charles; McElroy, Anne; Brownawell, Bruce
- Units
- GATE
- Keywords
- steroid estrogens, Wastewater