Determination of 11 Phenolic Endocrine Disruptors using Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry-Selected Ion Monitoring in Five Selected Wastewater Influents

An efficient method for the simultaneous determination of eleven phenolic endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) present in wastewater influent samples was described. The 11 phenolic EDCs including alkylphenols, chlorophenols, and bisphenol A were determined by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry-selected ion monitoring (GC/MS-SIM) following two work-up methods for comparison; isobutoxycarbonyl (isoBOC) derivatization and tert-butyldimethylsilyl (TBDMS) derivatization. The wastewater influent samples containing the 11 EDCs were adjusted to pH 2 with $H_2SO_4$ and then cleaned up with n-hexane. Next, they were subjected to solid-phase extraction (SPE) with XAD-4 resin and subsequently converted to isoBOC or TBDMS derivatives for sensitivity analysis with gas chromatography/mass spectrometry-selected ion monitoring (GC/MSSIM). Following isoBOC derivatization and TBDMS derivatization, the recoveries were 86.6-105.2% and 97.6-142.7%, the limits of quantitation (LOQ) for the 11 phenolic EDCs for SIM was 0.001-0.050 ng/mL and 0.003-0.050 ng/mL, and the SIM responses were linear with the correlation coefficient varying by 0.9717-0.9995 and 0.9842-0.9980, respectively. When these methods were applied to five selected wastewater influent samples, for isoBOC derivatization and TBDMS derivatization the ranges of concentration detected were 0.2-99.6 ng/mL and 0.4-147.4 ng/mL, respectively.