Naslov
Multriresidual analysis of emerging amphetamine-like psychoactive substances in wastewater and river water

Autori
Senta, Ivan ; Krizman, Ivona ; Ahel, Marijan ; Terzic, Senka

Izvornik
Journal of chromatography. A (0021-9673) 1425 (2015); 204-212

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Radovi u časopisima, članak, znanstveni

Ključne riječi
novel psychoactive substances ; designer drugs ; illicit drugs ; amphetamine ; wastewater ; liquid chromatography-tandem massspectrometry

Sažetak
Besides the common illicit drugs, such as cocaine, heroin, and marijuana, there is a growing concernabout the use of modern “designer drugs” that have emerged in large numbers over the past fewyears. In this work, a sensitive and selective method for simultaneous determination of 25 syntheticamphetamine-like psychoactive compounds, including amphetamine, sympathomimetic substitutedamphetamines, synthetic cathinones and ketamine, in raw wastewater (RW), secondary effluent (SE)and river water was developed. Samples were enriched by solid-phase extraction (SPE) on mixed-modereversed-phase/strong cation-exchange sorbent (Oasis MCX) and analysed by reversed- phase liquidchromatography coupled to electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The targetcompounds were separated on a Synergi Polar column and detected using multiple reaction monitoring(MRM) in positive ionisation mode. Accurate quantification was achieved by using several deuteratedanalogues as surrogate standards. Careful optimisation and validation of the procedure resulted in areliable determination of all target analytes in low ng/L range for all matrices, which makes the methodsuitable for the application in wastewater-based epidemiology. The method was applied for assessment ofselected compounds in municipal wastewater and river water from Croatia. It was shown that most of thewastewater samples contained detectable levels of the well-known synthetic illicit drugs, amphetamineand 3, 4-methylenedioxy- methamphetamine (MDMA) (concentrations up to 545 ng/L and 55 ng/L in RW, respectively), as well as ephedrine (up to 108 ng/L) and pseudoephedrine (up to 698 ng/L), which are usedas ingredients of popular over-the counter cough and cold medications. Other target amphetamine-likepsychoactive substances, recently reported for their potential abuse, were detected only occasionally andin low concentrations (<10 ng/L).

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Geologija

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