ABSTRACT
A quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe (QuEChERS)-based extraction method has been optimized for the determination of pentachlorophenol, 4-tertoctylphenol and 4-nonylphenol in river sediments. The extraction method was followed by gas chromatography-triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry (GC-QqQ-MS/MS) analysis, which ensures the reliable identification of the target compounds. The proposed method has been validated allowing the successful determination of the selected compounds, with recoveries ranging from 72 to 96%, when three concentration levels were evaluated (10, 50 and 100µgkg(-1)) and inter-day and intra-day precision, expressed as relative standard deviation (RSD), were lower than 20%. The method showed limits of detection (LODs) and limits of quantification (LOQs) ranging from 0.1 to 2.0µgkg(-1) and from 0.5 to 5.0µgkg(-1), respectively. Finally, 25 real samples from Poland have been analyzed, and only 4-tertoctylphenol was detected at concentrations up to 8.9µgkg(-1) of soil dry weight.
