Simultaneous detection of topramezon, atrazine, and atrazine metabolite residues in environmental water by large-volume SPE-UPLC-MS/MS

ABSTRACT

An analytical method that combined large-volume solid-phase (Cleanert-PEP) extraction with ultra-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (SPE-UPLC-MS/MS) was established for the detection of atrazine, atrazine metabolites, and topramezon residues in environmental water. The results showed that atrazine, its metabolites, and topramezon had a good linear relationship within the linear range of 0.5–50 μg/L, and the linear correlation coefficients of all compounds were r² ≥ 0.9989. At three spiked levels of 10, 100, and 1000 ng/L, the relative recoveries rate was between 77.1% and 114.1%, with relative standard deviations (RSDs) between 0.9% and 6.8%. The limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantification (LOQs) of all target compounds were between 0.4 and 3.0 ng/L, and between 1.2 and 10.0 ng/L, respectively. After optimisation, Cleanert-PEP was selected for pretreatment of environmental water, and its elution curve was studied, and the optimal elution volume was 6 mL. The analysis method was applied to surface water bodies around Tai’an City in Shandong Province, China, and none of the target metabolites were detected. This method has the advantages of high sensitivity, good stability, simple operation, and high efficiency. It can be used to quantify topramezon, atrazine, and atrazine metabolite residual in water samples and to investigate their behaviour in environmental water.

KEYWORDS:

• SPE
• environmental water
• Shandong province
• UPLC-MS/MS
• residue

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (NO. ZR2021MC129) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO. 31600021). We thank TopEdit (www.topeditsci.com) for its linguistic assistance during preparation of this manuscript.

Contributions

Huaxuan Fu: Complete to the experiments and draft writing. Zhifei Wang: Processing experimental data. Tao Zhang: Complete the material characterization section and data analysis. Bo Lv and Mingyue Du: Processing of figures and tables in the manuscript. Song Yang and Ru Chen: Design and guidance of research. All the authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [31600021]; Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation [ZR2021MC129].