Calixarene as macrocyclic host: A hydroxy functionalized hyper cross-linked polymer for efficient enrichment of phenolic environmental hormones

The detection of phenolic environmental hormones (PEHs) in environment and food samples can effectively monitor and evaluate their harmful residues. In this study, a calixarene-phloroglucinol (Calix-PGL) based hyper cross-linked polymer (Calix-PGL-HCP) was synthesized and used for the first time as a solid-phase extraction (SPE) sorbent to effectively concentrate the five PEHs from water, honey, and fish muscle samples. The combination of the host-guest recognition ability of Calix-PGL and the good porosity of the HCP endows the CalixPGL-HCP with good selectivity and high adsorption capacity for PEHs. Under optimized SPE parameters, the developed Calix-PGL-HCP-SPE/HPLC-UV method provided wide linearity in the range of 0.13-320 ng mL- 1 (ng g- 1) with good determination coefficients (r2 = 0.9939-0.9999), satisfactory recoveries (80.0 %-119 %) and acceptable precision (relative standard deviations (RSDs) <= 9.9 %). The limits of detection and limits of quantification were in the range of 0.04-5.00 ng mL- 1 (ng g-1) and 0.13-16.7 ng mL- 1 (ng g-1), respectively. The adsorption mechanism for the PEHs by the Calix-PGL-HCP was also elucidated. The method provides an efficient approach for the simultaneous detection of PEHs in food and environmental samples.