Influence of Mobile Phase Composition on Analytical Sensitivity of Lc–Esi–Ms/Ms for the Concurrent Analysis of Bisphenols, Parabens, Chlorophenols, Benzophenones, and Alkylphenols

Abstract

Phenols in the environment are important endocrine disruptors that can have adverse health effects on exposed individuals. Correlating phenol exposure to potential health implications requires developing a comprehensive and sensitive analytical method capable of analyzing multiple phenols in a single sample preparation and analytical run. Currently, no such method is available for multiple classes of phenols due to electrospray ionization  limitations in concurrent ionization and lack of sensitivity to certain phenols, especially alkylphenols. In this study, we investigated the influence of mobile phase compositions in ESI on concurrent ionization and analytical sensitivity of LC–ESI–MS/MS during the analysis of multiple classes of phenols; and we propose a comprehensive and sensitive analytical method for various phenol classes (i.e., bisphenols, parabens, benzophenones, chlorophenols, and alkylphenols). The proposed method was affected by 0.5 mM ammonium fluoride under methanol conditions; and it allowed the concurrent ionization of all the phenols and dramatically improved the analytical sensitivity for bisphenols and alkylphenols, which typically have poor ionization efficiency. The present method, combined with a “dilute and shoot” approach, enabled us to simultaneously quantify 38 phenols with good chromatographic behavior and sensitivity. Furthermore, its application on 80 urine samples obtained from aquatic (swimming) and land (indoor volleyball and outdoor football) athletes found that certain athletes can be exposed to specific environmental phenols, depending on the type of sports activity.

Keywords: Liquid Chromatography, Mass Spectrometry, Fluoride, Electrospray ionization, Environmental phenols, Alkylphenols