New method for rapid solid-phase extraction of large-volume water samples and its application to non-target screening of North Sea water for organic contaminants by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

A method has been developed that allows the solid-phase extraction of micro organic compounds from large volumes of water (101) for non-target analysis of filtered seawater. The filtration-extraction system is operated with gl ass fibre filter candles and the polymeric styrene-divinylbenzene sorbent S DB-1 at how-rates as high as 500 ml/min. Recovery studies carried out for a couple of model substances covering a wide range of polarity and chemical classes revealed a good performance of the method. Especially for polar com pounds (log K-OW 3.3-0.7) quantitative recovery was achieved. Limits of det ection were between 0.1 and 0.7 ng/l in the full scan mode of the MS. The s uitability of the method for the analysis of marine water samples is demons trated by the non-target screening of water from the German Eight for the p resence of organic contaminants. In the course of this screening a large va riety of substances was identified including pesticides, industrial chemica ls and pharmaceuticals. For some of the identified compounds their occurren ce in marine ecosystems has not been reported before, such as dichloropyrid ines, carbamazepine, propyphenazone and caffeine. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.