Determination of trace triclosan in environmental water by microporous bamboo-activated charcoal solid-phase extraction combined with HPLC-ESI-MS

A sensitive and efficient analytical method for triclosan (TCS) determination in water, which involves enrichment with bamboo-activated charcoal and detection with HPLC-ESI-MS, was developed. The influence of several operational parameters, including the eluant and its volume, the flow rate, the volume andacidity of the sample, and the amount of bamboo-activated charcoal, were investigated and optimized. Under the optimum conditions, linearity of the method was observed in the range of 0.0220 mu g/L, with correlation coefficients (r2) >0.9990. The limit of detection was 0.002 mu g/L based on the ratio of chromatographic signal to baseline noise (S/N = 3). The spiked recoveries of TCS in real water samples were achieved in the range of 97.6112.5%. The proposed method was applied to analyze TCS in real aqueous samples. All the surface water samples collected in Xiaoqing River had detectable levels of TCS with concentrations of 42197 ng/L.