Analysis of bromophenols in various aqueous samples using solid phase extraction followed by HPLC-MS/MS

A reliable and effective method for simultaneous analysis of trace amount of bromophenols (BPs) in various aqueous samples was developed in this study. The aqueous samples must be acidified after sampling to prevent the fast degradation of bromophenols. Solid-phase extraction was chosen to extract and purify the water samples. High performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry with an electrospray ionization source (HPLC-ESI-MS/MS) was used for following identification and quantification. Under the optimized condition, fourteen out of fifteen target brominated phenols were successfully separated and detected with the exception of 2,6-bromophenol (2,6-BP) whose response was too low to be quantified by the MS detector. The method was validated by spiking river water and seawater samples with different concentrations of BPs, and the qualified spiking recoveries (64-100%) and precisions (0.4-11% RSD) were obtained. The method detection limits were 0.1-13.9 ng/L and 0.1-21.9 ng/L for 0.1 L of river water and seawater samples, respectively, showing the influences from the sample matrix. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of bromophenol contamination in real water samples, and six bromophenols were identified with a wide concentrations ranging from ng/L to 1.1g/L.