WA2 Chemical and Biological Analysis of Endocrine Disrupting Compounds
255 Portland Ballroom
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM, Wednesday
() Simultaneous Determination of 30 Endocrine Disrupting Compounds in Municipal Wastewater and Bleached Kraft Mill Effluents by GC-HRMS.
Ikonomou, M1, Cai, S-S1, Fernandez, M1, Blair, J1, 1 Institute of Ocean Sciences, Sidney, BC, Canada
ABSTRACT- Increasing interest in sexual disruption and other endocrine disruption effects in aquatic wildlife residing in the vicinity of liquid wastewater stream discharge points, particularly in heavily urbanized or industrialized areas has sparked interest in methods to quantify several contaminants of concern in such effluents. In this study we have developed a novel gas chromatographic - high-resolution mass spectrometric (GC-HRMS) based method which permits the simultaneous determination of several groups of estrogenic endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) including surfactants, biogenic and synthetic steroids, phytoestrogens, and plasticizers in a single analysis. The method features, low sample volume (ca. 40mL), optimised florisil clean-up to minimize matrix interferences and optimised analyte derivatization to improve sensitivity via GC-HRMS. Detection limits were in the low ng/L range, recoveries were greater than seventy percent, and quantitation was based on isotope dilution surrogate internal standards for each chemical class. Furthermore, isotope ratio confirmation of target analyte identity and high resolution mass analysis (up to 10,000) ensured high analyte specificity and minimized matrix interferences. This method allows increased throughput and a large number of analytes measured simultaneously without compromising accuracy, precision, sensitivity and selectivity. When coupled with an appropriate bioassay technique such as a yeast estrogen screen (YES), chemometric analysis of the resultant data may be performed to determine which compounds may be most important in predicting total sample estrogenicity (see Fernandez et al., SETAC 2004). In this presentation, we will provide details of the method developed and we will also present data on its performance and profiles of the 30 target EDCs in the effluents of municipal wastewater systems and bleached kraft mills from British Columbia Canada.
Key words: GC-HRMS, EDCs, Sewage, BKME