Simultaneous determination of three banned psychiatric drugs in pig feed and tissue using solid‐phase reactor on‐line oxidizing and HPLC‐fluorescence detection

The banned addition of psychiatric drugs such as phenothiazines to animal feed and foodstuffs increases the risk of human organ lesion. Phenothiazines usually exhibit weak native fluorescence and can be oxidized to strongly fluorescent compounds. In this study, a novel, sensitive and convenient method of HPLC‐fluorescence detection based on post‐column on‐line oxidizing with lead dioxide solid‐phase reactor has been developed for simultaneous determination of three banned psychotropic drugs, promethazine, chlorpromazine and thioridazine. Three compounds were successfully separated on an Agilent TC‐C₁₈ column with mobile phase of acetonitrile (A) and water (B), both containing 0.5% (v/v) formic acid. A gradient elution was programmed and fluorimetric detection was performed at λ_ex/λ_em of 332/373 nm for promethazine, 340/380 nm for chlorpromazine and 352/432 nm for thioridazine. The calibration graphs gave good linearity over the concentration ranges of 30.0–4976.4 µg/L for promethazine, 2.0–2153.2 µg/L for chlorpromazine, and 15.0–3088.0 µg/L for thioridazine, and correlation coefficients (r) were ≥0.995. The method was applied to the determination of phenothiazines in pig feed and pig tissue, and the average spiked recoveries were in the range 69.1–115.4%. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.