Quantitative determination of triclocarban in wastewater effluent by stir bar sorptive extraction and liquid desorption-liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

Triclocarban is an antimicrobial and antibacterial agent found in personal care products and subsequently is a prevalent wastewater contaminant. A quantitative method was developed for the analysis of triclocarban in wastewater effluents using stir bar sorptive extraction-liquid desorption (SBSE-LD) followed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) by means of an electrospray interface. A stir bar coated with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is placed within a vial containing wastewater effluent and is stirred for an hour at room temperature. The PDMS stir bar is then placed in a LC vial containing methanol and is desorbed in a sonicator bath. The methanol is evaporated to dryness and reconstituted in 75% methanol. Spike and recovery experiments in groundwater that did not contain native concentrations of triclocarban were performed at 0.5 microg/L and were 93+/-8%. Recoveries in wastewater effluent that were corrected for the background levels of triclocarban were 92+/-2% and 96+/-5%, respectively, when spiked with 0.5 and 5 microg/L of triclocarban. The precision of the method as indicated by the relative standard error was 2%. The limit of quantitation was 10 ng/L. The SBSE-LD-LC/MS/MS method was applied to wastewater effluent samples collected from northeast Ohio. Triclocarban was quantitated in all five effluent samples, and its concentration ranged from 50 to 330 ng/L. The described method demonstrates a simple, green, low-sample volume, yet, sensitive method to measure triclocarban in aqueous matrices.