Rapid determination of four herbicides in urine with ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry / 预防医学

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To establish a ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem triple quadrupole mass spectrometry method for rapid simultaneous determination of quinclorac, acetochlor, butachlor and metolachlor in urine.@*Methods@#Urine samples were diluted 10 times, prepared into the mixed standard solution, and subjected to gradient elution on the ACQUITY UPLC BEH C18 column (100 mm×2.1 mm, 1.7 μm) with 0.1% formic acid and acetonitrile as the mobile phase. The quinclorac, acetochlor, metolachlor and butachlor levels were determined using electrospray ionization-positive ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem triple quadrupole mass spectrometry with the multiple reaction monitoring mode.@*Results@#Four herbicides were effectively separated on the ACQUITY UPLC BEH C18 column (100 mm× 2.1 mm, 1.7 μm), and good linear relationships were observed for quinclorac, acetochlor and butachlor at 1 to 25 μg/L and for metolachlor at 0.2 to 25 μg/L, with all linear correlation coefficients of >0.999. The detection limts of quinclorac, acetochlor, butachlor and metolachlor were 0.10, 0.10, 0.20 and 0.01 μg/L, respectively. The recovery rates of quinclorac, acetochlor and butachlor were 107.42%, 93.94% and 90.27% from urine samples at a spiked level of 5 µg/L, with relative standard deviations of 4.82%, 3.84% and 6.76%, and the recovery rate of metolachlor was 89.51% at a spiked level of 0.5 µg/L, with a relative standard deviation of 8.98%.@*Conclusion@#The chromatography and mass spectrometry conditions are optimized in this ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, which is effective for rapid simultaneous determination of quinclorac, acetochlor, metolachlor and butachlor in urine samples.