There is a growing concern over the presence of antibiotics in environmental sources of water. This has caused environmental and government labs to develop LC/MS methods to monitor water supplies for the presence of antibiotics.1-4 However, the low-level concentration of antibiotics in environmental water sources often requires extensive sample preconcentration and cleanup. Preparation of water samples (100-1000 mL) prior to LC/MS analysis, even with an “unlimited” sample volume, is time consuming and reduces sample throughput. This report presents a method that significantly decreases sample preparation time by applying on-line preconcentration and extraction in conjunction with detection using the TSQ Quantum Ultra in highly-selective reaction monitoring (H-SRM) mode for assaying antibiotics at low pg/mL concentrations.

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