Abstract

A practical, fast, and reproducible method was developed to separate and quantify four pharmaceutically active compounds and one plastic additive considered emerging contaminants in water samples by HPLC-DAD. The mixture of compounds included metformin (MET), bisphenol A (BPA), estradiol (E2), atorvastatin (ATV), and diclofenac (DCF). The mobile phase used for the chromatography runs was composed of 33:67 (MeCN: 0.05 M phosphate buffer, pH 3 + 0.1% v/v SDS) in gradient mode performed on an Inertsil ODS-3 column (150 x 4.6 mm, 5 mu m) at 23 degrees C. An efficient separation was achieved in a run time of 10 min, with an LOD and LOQ of 53 mu gL-1 and 160.5 mu gL-1 for MET; 17.6 mu gL-1 and 53.5 mu gL-1 for BPA; 30.1 mu gL-1 and 91.1 mu gL-1 for E2; 13.0 mu gL-1 and 39.4 mu gL-1 for ATV; and 15.8 mu gL-1 and 47.9 mu gL-1 for DCF, respectively. Method suitability parameters were evaluated according to ICH guidelines.