What is it about?
Pharmaceuticals are emerging contaminants in waste waters from where they are discharged into surface water, so they may be harmful to aquatic organisms. Beta-blockers are consumed in high tonnage every year owing to the rise in cardiovascular disease of the population, and are incompletely metabolized. They are removedeliminated from the body as the parent drugs or as metabolites into wastewater. A sensitive method using off-line solid-phase extraction (SPE) and liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) has been developed for the determination of 6 beta-blockers (bisoprolol, nadolol, betaxolol, atenolol, propranolol, pindolol) and one metabolite (4-hydroxy propranolol) in the influents and effluents of three urban waste water treatment plants (WWTPs).
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Why is it important?
The method was validated and beta-blocker recoveries after SPE in waste water were in the range of 71.2–103.3% with satisfactory intra-day and inter-day precision (RSD%) being located between 4.7 and 8.4%, and 8.1 and 14.4%, respectively. Optimization of LC-MS parameters generated low LOQ values between 0.34 and 7.37 ng mL−1. Atenolol was detected in all samples at higher average concentrations which ranged between 94.6 ng L−1 and 208.6 ng L−1 (effluent samples, influents). The other 3 beta-blockers: bisoprolol, betaxolol and propranolol were detected in influents in mean concentrations of 100.1 ng L−1, 44.9 ng L−1 and 26.8 ng L−1 and in effluents in mean concentrations of 51 ng L−1, 16.9 ng L−1 and 19.4 ng L−1. Propranolol was eliminated with the lowest average yields ranging from 25.19% to 31.78%, whereas atenolol, bisoprolol and betaxolol were eliminated from WWTPs with average yields ranging from 44.97 to 60.96%, 46.8 to 52.9% and 47.05 to 69.08%, respectively. Results obtained suggest that the adopted wastewater treatment processes are not efficient to remove these compounds and by penetrating into surface waters through evacuated effluents they can adversely affect aquatic organisms.
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This page is a summary of: A new analytical method for the determination of beta-blockers and one metabolite in the influents and effluents of three urban wastewater treatment plants, Analytical Methods, January 2019, Royal Society of Chemistry,
DOI: 10.1039/c9ay01597c.
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