Advance sample preparation to analyses selected emerging pollutants in Anguilla anguilla by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)

Abstract

A multiresidue method was developed for 5 pesticides and 17 emerging pollutants: 2 illicit drugs, 8 pharmaceuticals and 5 perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). The environmental matrices chosen for analysis were liver and muscle samples of eel Anguilla anguilla (Linnaeus, 1758). This species is a catadromous fish, spending the majority of their life cycle in fresh water or estuaries and returning to the sea to spawn traveling thousands of kilometers to the Sargasso Sea. It is also present in the Albufera lake, located in the Mediterranean coast of Valencia, Spain, where the rice farming and eels fishing are closely related (Esteve, et al., 2017). They are also challenging due to their high content in proteins (7-15%) and lipids (5-20%) of wet weight, (Degani, et al., 1986). Eels were from a local market of Valencia city (Spain), and extracted using quick easy cheap effective rugged and safe (QuEChERS) method. The dispersive solid phase extraction (dSPE) Enhanced Matrix Removal (EMR-lipid), especially developed by Agilent for lipid removal was applied for clean-up. Analysis was performed via LC-MS/MS, using a ExionLC AD coupled to a Sciex QTRAP 6500+ mass spectrometer (both from Sciex, Concord, Ontario, Canada) with electrospray ionization in positive and negative modes. Method detection limits of ≤25 ng g−1 dry weight and absolute recoveries values (60-120%) were achieved for most of the compounds. A satisfactory matrix effect was determined for each emerging pollutant analysed. The validated method was successfully applied to the analysis incurred liver and muscle of Anguilla anguilla samples, despite the species being resistant, further demonstrating the utility of the method to detect some emerging pollutants and for implementation in regulatory and commercial laboratories.