Determination of organic micro-pollutants such as personal care products, plasticizers and flame retardants in sludge

In this study, a method for the determination of organic micro-pollutants, i.e. personal care products such as synthetic musk fragrances, household bactericides, organophosphate flame retardants and plasticizers, as well as phthalates in sludge, has been developed. This method is based on lyophilisation and accelerated solvent extraction followed by clean-up steps, i.e. solid phase extraction and size exclusion chromatography. The determination is performed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Stable isotope-labelled compounds such as musk xylene (MX D₁₅), tri-n-butylphosphate (TnBP D₂₇) and triphenylphosphate (TPP D₁₅) were used as internal standards. Recovery rates were determined to be 36–114% (with typical relative standard deviation of 5% to 23%) for the target compounds. The limit of detection was 3–30 ng g⁻¹, and the limit of quantification was 10–100 ng g⁻¹ dry matter.