Quantification of six herbicide metabolites in human urine

We developed a sensitive, selective and precise method for measuring herbicide metabolites in human urine. Our method uses automated liquid delivery of internal standards and acetate buffer and a mixed polarity polymeric phase solid phase extraction of a 2 mL urine sample. The concentrated eluate is analyzed using high-performance liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry. Isotope dilution calibration is used for quantification of all analytes. The limits of detection of our method range from 0.036 to 0.075 ng/mL. The within- and between-day variation in pooled quality control samples range from 2.5 to 9.0% and from 3.2 to 16%, respectively, for all analytes at concentrations ranging from 0.6 to 12 ng/mL. Precision was similar with samples fortified with 0.1 and 0.25 ng/mL that were analyzed in each run. We validated our selective method against a less selective method used previously in our laboratory by analyzing human specimens using both methods. The methods produced results that were in agreement, with no significant bias observed.