Simultaneous determination of bisphenol A, bisphenol AF, tetrachlorobisphenol A, and tetrabromobisphenol A concentrations in water using on-line solid-phase extraction with ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry

An on-line solid-phase extraction (SPE) ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of the bisphenol A, bisphenol AF, tetrachlorobisphenol A, and tetrabromobisphenol A concentrations in water samples. The on-line SPE system used a 10 µm particle size SPE column to concentrate the analytes and was coupled with a 1.7 µm particle size chromatographic column for analysis. The total analysis time for each sample using this process was only 12 min, and the method limit of quantification (MLOQ) ranged from 1.5 to 53 ng/L for different water matrices when a 2.5 mL sample was injected. Isotopic internal standard calibration was used to compensate for matrix effects in the trace-level analysis using mass spectrometry. The method has good precision (RSD < 14.1%) and accuracy (spiked recoveries ranging from 85.1% to 110.8% at three spiking levels). Finally, this method was successfully used to analyse real environmental water samples from the Jiaxing region of Hangzhou Bay.