Determination of benzotriazole UV filters in fishes from Gran Canaria island

Abstract

Benzotriazoles are organic pollutants used in sunscreens and other personal care products, which may appear in the marine environment from different sources and be found in several matrices such us sediments, sewage and marine organisms. This work focuses on developing and validating a method to monitor the concentration of six benzotriazole compounds in different parts of the body (muscle, skin and viscera) of three fish species (Boops boops, Sphyraena viridensis, Sphoeroides marmoratus) collected around three marine outfalls of Gran Canaria island. Ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry has been chosen to separate and determine the target compounds while microwave assisted extraction was used to extract the compounds. Several parameters (power, extraction time and extractant solvent) were optimized to obtain the highest efficiency in the extraction. For the optimised method, LODs and LOQs were between 0.37 and 1.52 ng·g-1 and from 1.23 to 5.06 ng·g-1, respectively. The recoveries and relative standard deviation were in range 25.5 to 118.6 % with relative standard deviations in the range 0.6-18.8 %. Thirtysix samples were analysed, allowing the determination analyzed of UV 328 in eight of them in a concentration ranges between 6.2 and 69.5 ng·g-1.