Ultra-Trace Determination of Phthalate Ester Metabolites in Seawater, Sediments, and Biota from an Urbanized Marine Inlet by LC/ESI-MS/MS
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study presents results of an analytical method developed for the quantification of monoalkyl phthalate esters (MPEs) in seawater, sediments, and biota. The method uses accelerated solvent extraction, solid-phase extraction, and liquid chromatography electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC/ ESI-MS/MS). Results show the method is robust and can provide trace measurement of several MPE analytes at low parts per trillion levels in water and low parts per billion levels in sediments and biological tissues. Analyte recoveries varied between 70% and 110%. Method detection limits (MDLs) varied between 0.19 and 3.98 ng/L in seawater and between 0.024 and 0.99 ng/g in sediment and biota, which is approximately 10-50 times lower than previously reported MDLs using gas chromatography mass spectrometry. We applied the method to field collected samples of seawater, sediments, and tissues of mussels, crabs, and fish from False Creek an urbanized marine inlet near Vancouver, Canada. The results indicate residues of several MPEs can be found in surface waters, sediments, and organism tissues of this marine system. Monoethyl phthalate (MEP), mono-n-butyl phthalate (MnBP), and mono-(2-ethylhexyl)-phthalate (MEHP) were frequently detected in all matrices. MnBP generally exhibited the highest concentrations among MPEs analyzed. Detectable concentrations of MPEs varied from 1 to 600 ng/L in seawater, 0.1 to 20 ng/g dry wt in sediments, and 0.1 to 600 ng/g wet wt in biota. Observed concentrations of low molecular weight MPEs in mussels were found to be significantly higher (P < 0.05) than those of corresponding parent DPEs (e.g., MnBP > DBP). Mono-iso-nonyl-phthalate (MoC9) and mono-iso-decyl phthalate (MoC10), which were routinely detected in water and sediments, were not detected in False Creek biota, indicating negligible uptake and/or in vivo bioformation of these high molecular weight MPEs. The ability to measure MPEs in complex environmental samples provided by this LC/ESI-MS/MS method expands the capability for future biomonitoring and risk assessment of phthalate plasticizers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".