Determination of 20 Perfluorinated Compounds in Animal Liver by HPLC-MS/MS

A method was developed for the simultaneous determination of 20 perfluorinated alkyls (PFAS) in animal liver using high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) technique. The samples were extracted with 0.1% hydrochloric in acetonitrile and cleaned up with C18, N-propylethylendiamine (PSA) and graphitized carbon blacks (GCB). The analytes were separated by a reversed phase C18 column and gradiently eluted with 5 mM ammonium acetate in methanol and 5 mM ammonium acetate in water. The samples were quantified using isotope internal standard and external standard with the matrix matched standard calibration curve method. Good linearities were obtained for all the 20 PFAs in the range of 0.1–10 μg L−1 with the linear relative coefficients more than 0.9995. The limits of detection (LOD) and the limits of quantification (LOQ) for PFAs were 0.05–0.2 μg kg−1 and 0.4–0.5 μg kg−1, respectively. The recoveries at three different concentration levels (0.5, 2 and 5 μg kg−1) were in the range of 70.3%–108.1%. The repeatabilities expressed as relative standard deviations (RSD) were ranged from 2.1% to 11.9% (n = 6).