BACKGROUND

Nowadays, emergence of unexpected contaminants in drinking water is a challenging environmental problem facing humanity.

OBJECTIVE

Two eco-friendly spectrofluorimetric methods were proposed for the determination of three unexpected contaminants in drinking tap water.

METHODS

The first method is first derivative synchronous spectrofluorimetric method which was developed for simultaneous determination of atenolol (ATN) and diclofenac (DCF) without prior separation at Δλ = 70 nm and at Δλ = 80 nm for ATN and DCF, respectively. The second method was based on using sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) as fluorescent enhancer of triclosan (TCS) native fluorescence. TCS exhibits enhanced fluorescence at λ emission = 600 nm upon excitation at λ excitation = 299.4 nm. Solid phase extraction was carried out in both methods.

RESULTS

Linear calibration curves were obtained in concentration range of (4-3000 ng/mL) for ATN and (4-2000 ng/mL) for DCF, by measuring first derivative signal of fluorescence at 300 nm and 375.2 nm, respectively. TCS exhibits linear range (0.1-1 ng/mL) at 600 nm. Mean percentage recoveries were 101.04 ± 0.571, 99.66 ± 1.443, and 99.73 ± 0.566 for ATN, DCF, and TCS, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Validation of both methods were performed according to the International Conference on Harmonization guidelines. Results obtained were statistically compared with published methods and no significant differences were found. The proposed methods' greenness is evaluated using analytical Eco-scale and Green Analytical Procedure Index. A greenness comparison with previously published methods has been performed.

HIGHLIGHTS

Both methods were found to be eco-friendly and were successfully applied for the determination of the emerging contaminants in drinking tap water.