Accelerated solvent extraction then liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry for determination of 4-t-octylphenol, 4-nonylphenols, and bisphenol A in fish liver

Summary Analysis of extracts from fish liver containing alkylphenol contaminants can be hindered by the presence of co-extracted fats and proteins that interfere with chromatographic analysis. In this study accelerated solvent extraction (ASE), Florisil clean-up, then combined liquid chromatography—mass spectrometry (LC-MS) with an electrospray (ESI) interface have been used to optimize an analytical procedure for the analysis of octylphenol, nonylphenol, and bisphenol A in fish liver. After comparison of the efficiency of ASE with conventional Soxhlet extraction the developed procedure was applied to the analysis of liver samples. Calibration plots of the relationship between concentration and the ratio of the responses to the analyte and to the internal standard, 4-n-nonylphenol, were determined by linear regression analysis over the concentration range 0.05 to 10 ppm and resulted in good fits (r ²>0.994). Recoveries (evaluated for each liver sample as the ratio between response to the surrogate compound, 4-n-nonylphenol, and that to the internal standard, 4-n-heptylphenol, relative to the same ratio for a reference standard solution) were 53±20%. Under the experimental conditions used in this work the limits of detection (LOD), calculated by use of a signal-to-noise ratio of 3∶1, were 5 ng g⁻¹ for 4-t-octylphenol, 15 ng g⁻¹ for bisphenol A, and 20 ng g⁻¹ for nonylphenol. The method can be satisfactorily applied to screening analysis of octyl-and nonylphenols and bisphenol A in biological samples such as fish liver.