Trace analysis of technical nonylphenol, bisphenol A and 17α-ethinylestradiol in wastewater using solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

To enable high sample throughput, an automated solid-phase microextraction (SPME) method coupled with GC–MS for the trace analysis of technical nonylphenol, bisphenol A and 17α-ethinylestradiol was developed. The extraction performance of different SPME fibre coatings was examined, with polyacrylate proving most suitable. Although study of the extraction time showed that the analytes have not reached equilibrium after 3 h, as a compromise an extraction time of 1 h was applied in all the experiments with detection limits between 0.04 and 1 μg l−1 for wastewater effluent. The mean reproducibility of the technique is 8% RSD. Carry-over effects are negligible. The linearity of calibration curves ranges over three orders of magnitude. The method was tested for determining the analytes in influents and effluents of constructed wetland plants and in model wastewater used in laboratory experiments.