Occurrence of regulated pollutants in populated Mediterranean basins: Ecotoxicological risk and effects on biological quality.

Chemical stressors co-occur in mixtures into watercourses and this complicates predicting their effects on their ecological status. Our knowledge of river basin specific pollutants (RBSPs) is still limited, but it remains necessary to ensure the good chemical and ecological status. We performed an exercise on Mediterranean river sites exposed to urban and industrial pressures in order to, i) prioritize the occurring chemicals, ii) assessing the site's specific chemical risk (RQsite), and iii) relating the chemical risk to the biological quality, using as evidences invertebrates and diatom indices. Mediterranean rivers suffer from strong pressures which lead to a poor dilution ability, which makes the inhabiting biota highly vulnerable. The most frequent pollutants in the 89 sites surveyed included pharmaceutical products such as the antibiotics azithromycin, clarithromycin, and erythromycin, and the anti-inflammatory diclofenac, and products of industrial origin such as perfluorinated PFOS, nickel, and nonylphenol. Both the diatom index IPS and the macroinvertebrate index IBMWP hold strong negative correlations to RQsite, indicating a significant contribution of chemicals to biological impairment. Chemical contaminants (but not nutrients or dissolved organic carbon) were associated with significant changes to the taxonomic composition of invertebrate communities, but not to that of diatom communities. Our analyses indeed reveal that the impact of co-occurring chemicals translates onto negative effects in the biological quality. Our approach may be of use to evidence impacts on water resources and water quality in rivers under strong human pressure.

Profiling of compounds and degradation products from the postharvest treatment of pears and apples by ultra-high pressure liquid chromatography quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry.

This study deals with a simple strategy to pinpoint potential unknown compounds in full scan mass spectrometry (MS) experiments. Forty samples of apples and pears intended for human consumption were analyzed by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography quadrupole-time-of-flight (UPLC-QqTOF-MS), after extraction of the possible contaminants by rinsing the peel of the fruit with ethyl acetate. The peaks were visually recognized in the total ion chromatogram (TIC). Two major types of postharvest treatments were detected in this set of samples: imazalil (IMZ)/ethoxyquin (EQ) and thiabendazole (TBZ)/diphenylamine (DPA). The present work also describes the metabolites formed by degradation of EQ (to our knowledge not previously reported) and DPA (there was mass spectral evidence of some of them but full identification was not pursued). Hydroxy-DPA, n-phenyl-4-quinoneimine, methoxy-DPA, demethyl-EQ, demethyldehydro-EQ, EQ-dimer, methyl-EQ, EQ-N-oxyl and 2',2,4,-trimethyl-6-quinolone were unequivocally identified and confirmed. Some relationships between the applied postharvest treatment and the metabolites formed were established. Remarkably, they may constitute a useful fingerprint in further investigations of postharvest treatments. Among other significant results, the study also reveals for the first time the presence of some EQ metabolites in fruits, which are different from those previously reported in animal tissues. There is not information on the occurrence of EQ metabolites in fruits and the DPA ones have not been studied extensively in pears and apples. The levels of the metabolites found exceeded several times those of the parent compounds.

Identification of unknown pesticides in fruits using ultra-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Imazalil as a case study of quantification.

Ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UPLC-QqTOF-MS) is an emerging technique offering more rapid and efficient separation, as well as the possibility to obtain accurate mass measurement and tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). This paper deals with the use of UPLC-QqTOF-MS to identify the pesticide residues present in complex pear extracts. Carbendazim, imazalil, and ethoxyquin were successfully identified because of the accurate mass determination of their protonated molecule and their major fragments in the product ion mass spectra. A few plastic and latex additives were also found, most of them probably coming from the packaging transfer to the fruits. The potential of the UPLC-QqTOF-MS and UPLC-QqTOF-MS/MS techniques as a quantification tool is also discussed taking imazalil as example. For quantification, calibration curves were linear over a dynamic range of 2 orders of magnitude, whereas higher calibration ranges are better adjusted to polynomial curves of second and third order. Quantification using different mass windows was also assessed. Accurate quantification required mass windows as wide as 20 mDa, narrower mass windows of 5 mDa provided erroneous quantification, probably because the low ion abundance. The mean recoveries and percentage relative standard deviation (RSD) of 35 determinations for imazalil were 76% (13% RSD) by MS and 77% (14% RSD) by MS/MS. The theoretical limit of detection was 0.4 microg kg(-1), with a validated limit of quantification of 2 microg kg(-1). The quantitative data obtained using UPLC-QqTOF-MS were compared with those obtained using conventional liquid chromatography (LC)-MS/MS with a triple quadrupole (QqQ). It was concluded that UPLC-QqTOF-MS might become a powerful analytical tool for both, unknown's identification and quantification of target pesticides.