Veterinary drugs containing antimicrobial agents are often administered to livestock to treat or prevent disease and, at low levels, to promote growth in food-producing animals. Government agencies have discovered that some companies are abusing the use of these drugs, by administering them at higher than recommended levels to promote faster growth. This practice results in unwanted drug residues in meat and meat products eaten by humans. Sulfonamides are one class of antimicrobial agent used for that purpose. This AN shows that ASE can extract sulfonamides from meat and baby food with meat.

Most current methodologies for the quantitation of antibiotics in drinking water revolve around analysis using triple stage quadrupole platforms with offline sample preparation. This is a proven technique for the analysis of many contaminants in various types of water samples, but the offline sample preparation steps are time-consuming and prone to operator error and reproducibility problems. We demonstrate the ability to directly inject the water sample without any offline preconcentration. We utilize LC-MS with a Thermo Scientific Exactive Plus Orbitrap MS using HR/AM.

There is growing environmental concern regarding the health impact of trace levels of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in water resources. In response, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published Method 1694, which determines dozens of PPCPs in water, soil, sediment, and biosolids by HPLC-MS/MS. We demonstrate a progressive approach to analyzing PPCPs in environmental sources of water at the ng/L level with online sample preparation using small volumes of water, thus saving time and reducing the cost of analysis.

Chromeleon 7.2 CDS supports a quantitative method for targeted analysis of antibiotics with LC coupled to both UV and MS detection. The application is realized with state-of-the-art LC-MS instrumentations. The Thermo Scientific Vanquish UHPLC system is coupled to the Thermo Scientific Q Exactive HF Hybrid Quadrupole-Orbitrap mass spectrometer. Here we present step-by-step the creation of the instrument method, data processing method, and report template, that are thereafter used to generate an LC-MS eWorkflow.

The Thermo Scientific UltiMate 3000 RS HPLC system is applied for the determination of sulfonamide antibiotics. The separation is performed on a Thermo Scientific Acclaim 120 C18 RSLC column, with UV detection at 265 nm.