Yassine KADMI^1,2, Lidia FAVIER^1,2*, Andrei Ionuţ SIMION³ & Dominique WOLBERT^1,2
1Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Rennes, CNRS, UMR 6226, 11 Allée de Beaulieu, CS 50837,
Rennes Cedex 7, France; *Corresponding author email: lidia.favier@ensc-rennes.fr
²Université Européenne de Bretagne, France;
³Vasile Alecsandri, University of Bacau, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Chemical and Food Engineering, 157 Calea Marasesti, 600115 Bacau, Romania.

A RAPID AND SENSITIVE METHOD FOR THE MONITORING OF N-NITROSODIPHENYLAMINE AND N-NITROSODIMETHYLAMINE IN MULTIPLE WATER MATRICES

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N-nitrosamines are probable human carcinogens that could seriously affect the safety of drinking water consumers. In this study, a rapid, sensitive and reliable solid-phase extraction method combined with ultra-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry has been developed for the quantification of N-nitrosodiphenylamine and N-nitrosodimethylamine at ultra-trace levels in aqueous matrices. Chromatographic separation was performed using an Acquity UPLC BEH C18 column and a mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile, water, and formic acid (60:40:0.1, v/v/v) at a flow rate of 0.4 mL min^-1. The run time of the instrumental method was two minutes. Under optimized conditions the performance of the proposed method was studied in terms linearity (r² ≥ 0.998), precision (< 3%), accuracy (between 99% and 103%), lower limit of detection (0.04–0.16 ng L^-1), and lower limit of quantification (0.08–0.32 ng L^-1). The obtained extraction recoveries of the target compounds were within the range of 85–101%, and the relative standard deviations were less than 4%. The matrix effect was within 84–99% at all quality control levels. These results showed clearly that, the developed method is rapid, sensitive efficient, and accurate for simultaneous determination of N-nitrosodiphenylamine and N-nitrosodimethylamine. In addition, the proposed method has been successfully applied for the screening of these molecules in real water samples.