Multi-component quantitative analysis of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the environment by LC-MS/MS with fast polarity switching

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) constitute a group of emerging contaminants which have received considerable attention in recent years. Monitoring of PPCPs in the environment is vital as many of these compounds are ubiquitous, persistent and biologically active with recognised endocrine-disruption functions. Given the hazardous nature of these compounds, there is a need to provide fast and sensitive multi-residue methods that are able to analysis multiple classes of compound within one analytical procedure.
Here we report a new multi-residue UHPLC-ESI-QqQ method that utilises fast polarity switching with an optimised chromatographic gradient that removes matrix effects and results in excellent ng/L detection levels. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of polarity switching in comparison to dedicated single polarity experiments.