Analysis of 60 pharmaceuticals and personal care products in sewage sludge by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography and tandem mass spectroscopy

• A comparison of three different analytical proposals for the analysis PPCPs in sewage sludge was presented. clean-up step essentially preceded by extraction technique UAE. direct injection UAE extract with no prior LC-MS/MS provided best performance. The resulting method validated and successfully applied dewatered digested samples. Acetaminophen reported concentrations above 1,000 ng g −1. This paper presents a determination 60 pharmaceuticals personal care products (PPCPs) solid urban sludge. Two fast sample pretreatments, i.e., online solid-phase-extraction (online SPE) (DI), were tested against conventional offline phase (offline SPE). In all cases, subsequently, extracts underwent ultra-high-performance-liquid chromatography coupled to tandem-mass-spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS), simultaneously operating both positive negative electrospray ionization (ESI) mode. addition, as matrices, steps necessarily ultra-sound-assisted (UAE) cases. Matrix-matched quantification combined internal standard providing high reliability approaches. Best performance observed fully automatized non-pretreated DI method, showing limits detection below 30 −1 many target compounds, recoveries between 80 120%. Finally, working samples from wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) Valladolid (Spain). found at .