Chlorophenols in Drinking Water using GC/MS/MS

There is currently great environmental interest in chlorinated phenol derivatives due to their high toxicity and wide industrial use. In response, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has compiled a list of eleven phenols that are considered to be priority pollutants. In 1982, the EEC issued its own pollutant list which includes a large number of polychlorophenols, and established a maximum allowable overall concentration of 0.5 μg/l for these compounds in drinking water. Few currently available analytical techniques allow the direct determination of chlorophenols at such low concentration levels. This has promoted the development of various procedures for their extraction from their matrices using liquid-liquid extraction, solid phase extraction or carbon cartridges. In every case, large volumes of sample have to be processed and then the final extracts must be concentrated. This solvent evaporation step has been shown to result in major losses of several chlorophenols.