Assessing antibiotic residues in sediments from mangrove ecosystems: A review

Antibiotics' widespread and abusive use in aquaculture and livestock leads to extensive environmental dissemination and dispersion, consequently increasing antibiotic-resistant bacteria in marine ecosystems. Hence, there is an increased need for efficient methods for identifying and quantifying antibiotic residues in soils and sediments. From a review of the last 20 years, we propose and compare different chromatographic techniques for detecting and quantifying antibiotics in sediment samples from marine ecosystems, particularly in mangrove forest sediments. The methods typically include three stages: extraction of antibiotics from the solid matrix, cleaning, and concentration of samples before quantification. We address the leading causes of the occurrence of antibiotics in marine ecosystem sediments and analyze the most appropriate methods for each analytical stage. Ultimately, selecting a method for identifying antibiotic residues depends on multiple factors, ranging from the nature and physicochemical properties of the analytes to the availability of the necessary equipment and the available resources.

Green Assessment of Analytical Procedures for the Determination of Pharmaceuticals in Sewage Sludge and Soil

The main difficulties when analyzing pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) in solid environmental samples is the complexity of the samples and the low concentration levels of such pollutants. Most efforts are focused in achieving good analytical performance parameters such as high recoveries or low detection limits without considering if the methods are environmentally friendly. In this work, the main tools proposed for assessing the greenness of analytical methodologies (Analytical Eco-scale, Green Analytical Procedure Index (GAPI), and Analytical GREEnness metric (AGREE)) have been applied to nine analytical procedures that include recent important analytical tendencies. The three metrics identified the paper spray ionization method as the greenest procedure since it used untreated samples for direct mass spectrometry analysis. Using Analytical Eco-scale, most of the evaluated procedures were rated as "acceptable green". However, the use of internal standards resulted key in the environmental impact of the method which provided contradictory results versus other metrics. GAPI found greenness similarities between most of selected methods, hindering a greenness classification. AGREE allowed the weighting of each evaluation criterion providing a greenness ranking. The application of each metric detecting their weaknesses and strengths was discussed. The incorporation of validation analytical features in greenness metrics was a gap revealed.

Rapid determination of sulfonamides in chicken using two-dimensional online cleanup mode with three columns coupled to liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

A novel method based on online cleanup mode combined with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was established. After an automated sample cleanup system with aqueous gel column, sulfonamides in chicken were detected in multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. The total run time of the system, which included automated extraction, analytical chromatography and re-equilibration, was within 30 min. Different experimental processes containing extraction, purification, separation, and detection have been evaluated respectively to obtain optimized parameters. The developed method was fully validated and the efficient and superior performance of the developed method was demonstrated. The method produced linear results for all sulfonamides from 1 to 10 ng g^-1 with a linearity >0.99. The intra-day precision of the method was <8.45% while the inter-day precision was <9.11%. The matrix effect was 77.5% to 105.1%. The recovery was in the range of 72.66% to 116.7% for all sulfonamides. The limit of quantitation in the chicken was 0.6 ng g^-1 and the limit of detection was 0.2 ng g^-1. Compared with traditional procedures, the automated sample clean-up strategy could significantly shorten the analysis time and offer higher detectability, with the advantage of sufficient sensitivity. Also, the use of gel chromatography column employed the water phase and reduced the organic reagent to achieve the level of green chemistry.