1. Sources and Significance
Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) may be found in many waterbodies. Pharmaceutical products can make their way into drinking water sources as a result of their extensive use in human and veterinary medicine. Likewise, chemicals from soaps, cosmetics, and other personal care products can be found in drinking water sources. (Although not truly a PPCP, caffeine is included here because it may be used as a surrogate to measure the degree of human influence on various water systems.) Many drinking water sources can be affected by wastewater discharges,1 stormwater runoff, septic tanks, and development. A survey of 139 US rivers and streams potentially affected by wastewater discharges found that most sampled waters contained PPCPs (among other components) in the nanogram to microgram per liter range.2 Wastewater and drinking water treatment processes remove various amounts of PPCPs, but even trace concentrations may affect more sensitive aquatic organisms.3
The method presented here addresses 13 compounds, including some of the highest-production-volume and most refractory PPCPs (Table 6810:1). It can be used to analyze wastewater, recycled water, drinking water, and raw source water, although reporting limits may vary according to matrix. Based on a combination of several previously published methods,4–6 this method concentrates samples and removes some interference via solid-phase extraction (SPE), and then measures analyte concentrations using 2 separate liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) methods.
A Water Research Foundation (WaterRF) project provides more details on this method,7 as well as other methods and information useful in PPCP analysis. WaterRF researchers tested this method for both reliability and multiple compounds, including interlaboratory validation of the 13 compounds listed in Table 6810:1. A single laboratory also validated this method for atenolol, atorvastatin, azithromycin, N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide (DEET), furosemide, iohexol, iopromide, meprobamate, metoprolol, propranolol, tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate (TCEP), and triclocarban.8 This method may be applicable for other PPCPs if the laboratory can demonstrate acceptable recovery, precision, and stability of the compounds using the quality control (QC) protocols in Section 6020 and in this method.