A rapid determination of acidic pharmaceuticals in environmental waters by molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction coupled to tandem mass spectrometry without chromatography.

This study presents a rapid analytical method that involves an off-line molecularly imprinted solid-phase extraction (MISPE) specific for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) as a selective sample pretreatment coupled directly to tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS). The developed methodology provided sensitive and selective detection and quantification of six acidic pharmaceuticals in wastewaters without the chromatographic separation. The optimised MISPE procedure enabled to extract effectively the studied analytes from effluent and influent wastewaters with satisfactory recovery values (from 62% to 103%). The analytical method developed was validated using 50 mL of effluent wastewaters, obtaining limits of detection (LODs) lower than 0.1 µg L(-1) for all the compounds studied. The method was successfully applied for the determination of these acidic pharmaceuticals in effluent and influent wastewaters. The analytes and their concentration are in line with other studies in which these analytes are determined by SPE-LC-MS/MS in similar samples.