Avaliação da técnica de extração sortiva em disco rotatório (RDSE) para determinação multirresíduo de agrotóxicos em água por UHPLC-MS/MS

Abstract

The use of pesticides in agriculture and urban areas has always been associated with advantages and disadvantages. As benefits, the increase of the productivity of crops and the control of vectors that cause diseases can be highlighted. However, excessive use of these substances has been causing human health damage as well as environmental degradation, especially regarding to water resources. In the present work, a method for the determination of 62 pesticides residues in surface water using rotating disk sorptive extraction (RDSE) as sample preparation and determination by ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS/MS) was optimized and validated. Several parameters were evaluated during the development of the extraction method: time and rotational disk velocity in the extraction step, types and amounts of sorbents, sample pH, ionic strength, time and velocity of the rotating disk in the desorption step of the analytes and different desorption solvents. The best results were obtained using 50 mL of acidified sample at pH 2.0 and 2.5 g of NaCl. The velocity of rotation disk in the extraction stage was 1600 rpm in a time of 80 min. Inside the disk cavity the polymeric sorbent Oasis® HLB (20 mg) used. The desorption step of the analytes was performed with 3 mL of methanol for 60 min using a rotation velocity of 1600 rpm. The analytical curves showed linearity between 0.05 or 0.1 to 2 μg L-1, with r2 values greater than 0.99 for all compounds. The method LOQ values ranged from 0.05 to 0.1 μg L-1. The method showed suitable accuracy and precision, with recoveries between 70.1 and 119.9% and RSD ≤20% for the spiked levels at 0.05; 0.1; 0.5 and 2 μg L-1. The validated method was applied to 11 surface water samples from different river basins of the Rio Grande do Sul state. Only one sample presented no pesticide residues. The other samples presented residues of at least one of the following pesticides: atrazine, azoxystrobin, clomazone, difenoconazole, epoxiconazole, propoxur, simazine and tebuconazole. From the six hydrographic basins, all presented pesticides residues and the concentrations ranged between 0.06 and 0.35 μg L-1. Therefore, the results indicate that the proposed method is suitable for the analysis of pesticide residues in surface waters, allowing the preparation of several samples simultaneously with low material consumption.