Method Validation for Simultaneous Quantification of Some High-risk Pesticides in Surface Water Samples by SPE-LC-MS/MS

In this paper, a solid phase extraction procedure was developed for the simultaneous extraction of 22 multiclass high-risk pesticides, containing a variety of chemical groups (organophosphate, neonicotinoid, sulfonylurea, strobilurin, triazole, triazine, and acetanilide), from surface water samples. The target analytes extracted on the HLB SPE cartridge, and then eluted with acetonitrile with 5% (v/v) formic acid. The final sample solution was analysed by high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) system. Under optimum conditions, good linearity was obtained for the target pesticides with correlation coefficient greater than 0.99. The limit of quantitation (LOQ) for the 22 pesticides was 0.1 ng/mL. The absolute recoveries of the pesticides from spiked water samples ranged from 70.0% to 121.5%. Relative standard deviations (RSD) for five replicate determinations were below 14.7%. The proposed method has been successfully applied to detect the presence of multiclass pesticides in environmental water samples.