The occurrence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products in the aquatic environment has been a worldwide concern over the past two decades. Triclosan (5-chloro-2-(2,4-dichlorophenoxy)phenol) is an antimicrobial agent, listed by the 76/768/EEC European Commission council directive as a preservative for cosmetic products. It has a bacteriostatic efficacy against a broad spectrum of microorganisms as well as a favourable human safety profile. However, previous investigations concluded that the same types of mechanisms involved in antibiotic resistance also account for the observed cross-resistance with antibiotics in laboratory isolates. Hence, there is a link between triclosan and antibiotics, and it is generally believed that the extensive use of products containing triclosan may promote the development of microbial resistance. The presence of triclosan in wastewater, surface water, seawater and sediments has been frequently reported in Europe and the United States. This is of concern, given the fact that under certain conditions (such as sunlight radiation) it can be readily converted into various by-products including amongst others polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins. Accordingly, ccurrent research efforts are directed towards the development of simple and sensitive analytical methods, capable of accurately monitoring the safe removal of trace quantities of triclosan by using innovative treatment technologies.

The ability of hollow-fibre liquid-phase microextraction coupled to gas-chromatography mass-spectrometry to determine trace amounts of triclosan, an antimicrobial agent, in water samples is investigated. The LPME conditions such as extraction solvent, hollow-fibre length, sample volume, ionic strength, pH, agitation rate and sampling time, were investigated. Overall, 1.3 cm hollow-fibre segments containing 3 μl of toluene were exposed for 10 min to 5 ml aqueous samples stirred at 1000 rpm. The calibration curve for triclosan is linear yielding a 0.9986 correlation coefficient and under the single ion monitoring mass-spectrometry mode the detection limit was found 0.031μg/l. The repeatability of the proposed method was found to be good and the analysis of spiked wastewater samples revealed that matrix had little effect on extraction. The developed analytical protocol was then used to successfully monitor the sonochemical degradation of a spiked aqueous solution containing 50 μg/l of triclosan subject to pulsed ultrasonic irradiation (80 kHz ultrasonic frequency) at a constant electric power output of 150 W and a 21 °C constant water bath temperature. Triclosan degradation was quantitative in 270 min of reaction.

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