Rapid HPLC Method for Monitoring Relevant Residues of Pharmaceuticals Products in Environmental Samples

This work presents a multi-residue analytical method based on solid phase extraction (SPE) followed by high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) with diode array (DAD) detection for the simultaneous determination of a group of pharmaceutical products that include ten antidepressants and three anticancerigenic in environmental samples (water and soil). Baseline separation of the studied compounds was obtained on an ultrabase C18 (4.6 mm i.d. × 150 mm, 5 μm particle) column using acetonitrile:phosphate buffer pH 2.5 (35:65, v/v) as mobile phase with a flow rate of 1.5 mL/min. Different aspects including linearity, accuracy, precision and detection and quantification limits were examined in order to validate the proposed method. Detection limits between 1 and 50 ng/mL were obtained for all the target compounds. This method was applied to the analysis of environmental samples as waters and soils of different precedence. Prior, the HPLC determination the samples were purified and enriched using SPE or liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) of the target compounds.