ABSTRACT
Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) comprise a diverse collection of thousands of chemical substances, including prescription and over-the-counter therapeutic drugs, veterinary drugs, fragrances, lotions, and cosmetics. The major sources of PPCPs in the environment are human activities, illicit drugs, veterinary drug use, agribusiness, residues from pharmaceutical manufacturing, and residues from hospitals. Despite the advancement of analytical chemistry, the direct injection of environmental samples in the chromatographic system is almost always impossible, due to the complexity of the sample and the low levels in which these compounds are present in the samples. PPCPs have been investigated in many environmental matrices, such as water bodies, sediment, soil, and biological samples. The use of liquid chromatography (LC)–mass spectrometry for qualitative and quantitative analyses of PPCPs is preferred instead that of Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, since these compounds can be determined without a derivatization step in LC, and most of them are polar and thermally labile.
