Use of densitometric TLC for detection of selected drugs present in river water in south Poland

The steadily increasing consumption of popular drugs (e.g. common anti-bacterial, anti-convulsant, anti-hallucinatory, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic formulations) prescribed both in human and veterinary medicine (and sometimes available even without medical prescription) results in growing contamination of the environment by these substances and their metabolites. This contamination is naturally directed through the rivers to the seas and oceans and tends to accumulate in these terminal reservoirs. It was the aim of the work discussed in this paper (i) to establish a simple yet efficient solid-phase extraction (SPE) method for isolation of the drugs josamycin, sulfamethoxazole, carbamazepine, diclofenac, and iopromide from aqueous matrices; (ii) to quantify these compounds by use of densitometric TLC; and (iii) to test the method by applying it to environmental samples (river water from South Poland). The results obtained clearly demonstrate that SPE combined with densitometric TLC is highly suited to this analytical task.