Liquid Chromatography tandem Mass Spectrometry determination of 34 priority and emerging pollutants in water from the influent and effluent of a drinking water treatment plant

Abstract This study evaluates the applicability of a method based on the direct injection of a large volume of water samples to identify and quantify 34 priority and emerging substances, most of them discussed in Directive 2013/39/EU on priority substances in the field of water policy, and Decision 2018/840/EU (Watch List). The method directly injects 500 µL of filtered water sample and so does not use a pre-concentration step. The method was satisfactorily validated for influent and effluent water from a drinking water treatment plant, at three concentrations (1, 10 and 100 ng L−1) with precision and accuracies in the range 1-17% and 71-122% respectively. Sensitivity was good with detection limits in the range 0.15 – 10 ng L−1 and complied with EU limits in all cases except for estrone, 17-β-estradiol and 17-α-ethinylestradiol. For these hormones, an on-line solid phase extraction was developed and evaluated. The methods were applied to the analysis of water collected at the influent and effluent of a drinking water treatment plant and revealed the presence of 18 of the target compounds in the influent water and 8 in the effluent water. This showed that most the compounds had been efficiently removed by the processes of the drinking water treatment plant.