Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL, 33199, USA.
Southeast Environmental Research Center (SERC), Institute of Environment, Florida International University, 11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, FL, 33199, USA.
Bull Environ Contam Toxicol. 2020 Sep;105(3):351-357. doi: 10.1007/s00128-020-02942-6. Epub 2020 Aug 4.
Sucralose is one of the most popular artificial sweeteners worldwide. Due to its high stability, persistence and low removal efficiency in wastewater treatment plants, sucralose has been used as an indicator of wastewater intrusion into aquatic systems. However, its stability has also been a reason for discussion whether sucralose's presence in surface water could indicate a recent anthropogenic input. Caffeine and acetaminophen have been considered as tracers in human impacted aquatic ecosystems and potentially good indicators of recent anthropogenic inputs into the environment due to their short half-lives in water. Here, a novel, high throughput and sensitive method based on online SPE-LC-HRMS for the determination of caffeine, sucralose and acetaminophen was developed and validated for both fresh and seawater samples and applied to environmental water samples to evaluate the efficiency of these compounds as tracers of aquatic pollution. Caffeine and sucralose were detected in > 70% of samples, while acetaminophen was only detected in 3% of samples above the MDL, demonstrating its limited environmental applicability.
三氯蔗糖是世界上最受欢迎的人工甜味剂之一。由于其在废水处理厂中的高稳定性、持久性和低去除效率，三氯蔗糖已被用作废水侵入水生系统的指示剂。然而，由于其在地表水中的存在是否表明最近有人类活动的输入，其稳定性也一直是讨论的原因。咖啡因和对乙酰氨基酚由于其在水中的半衰期短，被认为是受人类影响的水生生态系统中的示踪剂，并且可能是最近人为输入环境的良好指标。在这里，开发并验证了一种基于在线 SPE-LC-HRMS 的用于测定咖啡因、三氯蔗糖和对乙酰氨基酚的新型高通量和灵敏方法，用于淡水和海水样品，并应用于环境水样中，以评估这些化合物作为水污染示踪剂的效率。在超过 70%的样品中检测到了咖啡因和三氯蔗糖，而对乙酰氨基酚仅在高于 MDL 的 3%的样品中检测到，表明其在环境中的应用有限。
