Cigarette filters as adsorbents of solid-phase extraction for determination of fluoroquinolone antibiotics in environmental water samples coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography

The potential use of cigarette filters (CFs) as solid-phase extraction (SPE) adsorbents for the preconcentration of six fluoroquinolones (FQs) antibacterial agents prior to liquid chromatography was examined in this paper. In order to find a suitable procedure for extraction of the target FQs in one single step, various parameters probably affecting the extraction efficiency including the eluent kind and volume, sample flow rate, pH, ion strength and sample volume were systematically optimized. Under the optimized conditions, the target FQs could be easily extracted by the proposed SPE cartridge. Combination of SPE with HPLC/UV provided detection limits for different FQs of 2–5 ng L−1 when 500 mL of water sample was processed. The precision of the method, expressed as relative standard deviation, ranged from 4.1 to 6.3% for 2.5 μg L−1 FQs. The recoveries of FQs spiked in environmental water samples ranged from 76 to 112%. The results obtained from the proposed method demonstrated that CFs-based solid-phase extraction combined with HPLC/UV was suitable for analyzing fluoroquinolones in water samples at ng L−1 concentration level.