Personal care products (PCPs) are used for daily health care, refreshment, cosmetology, disinfection etc. The pharmaceuticals or active ingredients may be abandoned or treated improperly and enter the environment. Although at trace levels, there is possibility that aquatic and terrestrial lives permanently expose to multiple sources of pharmaceuticals and active ingredients of PCPs. This project targeted 13 critical chemicals including acetaminophen, caffeine, oxybenzone, DEET, triclosan, diclofenac, ibuprofen, naproxen, 17α-ethynyl estradiol (EE2), estrone (E1), 17β-estradiol (E2), estriol (E3) and nonylphenol (NP). They were classified as analgesics, hormones and detergents based on the survey last year. We have completed the analytical method development for water sample pretreatment and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis. This project analyzed the above chemicals using LC-MS/MS and employed a UPLC HSS T3 column (50 × 2.1 mm, 1.8 μm pore size). The organic mobile phase was methanol and the aqueous one was 5 mM ammonium acetate. The correlation coefficient of calibration curves were greater than 0.995. For sample pretreatment, PolarPlus C18 50mm speedisk (J.T. Baker) was used with automatic solid phase extraction system (Horizon SPE-DEX 4790). We sampled 15 representative points in Tamshui River basin and the influents and effluents in 4 wasteater treatment plants (WWTPs). The results revealed that caffeine levels were the highest in river water (up to 1963 ng/L). The concentrations of the PCPs in downstream were higher than in upstream. Sea water may have diluted the contaminants in river water near estuaries. Levels of acetaminophen, and caffeine (up to 15508 and 32816 ng/L, respectively) were the highest in WWTP influents; acetaminophen and caffeine were effectively removed by more than 95%. These results indicated the wide distribution of these compounds in environmental waters in northern Taiwan.

Personal care products；LC/MS/MS；wastewaters；surface water；Solid-phase extraction