Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products

Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) refer to a broad group of thousands of chemicals, including over the counter and prescription drugs, veterinarian drugs and many consumer products used for personal health, cosmetics, and agribusiness and detected frequently in the environment. Many of these compounds have suspected or unknown effects on humans and other species.

• As the originator of EPA Method 1694, we are the pioneer in the commercialization and wide availability of PPCPs measurements using isotope dilution/surrogate standard quantitation LC-MS/MS. Our work is accredited to ISO-17025 standards and benchmarked using PE studies as available.
• With measurements in water, soil, sediment, WWTP compartments and tissue, we support large-scale studies on the occurrence, fate, transport, and mass balance of PPCPs and hormones.
• With frequent requests from our clients and partners, our list of PPCPs has more than doubled since EPA 1694 and we offer close to 200 targets in our PPCP family.
• In addition to survey methods with large analyte lists, we offer specialty methods with low reporting limits for select PPCPs including bisphenols, and triclosan and methyl triclosan.

Hormones and Sterols

In addition to our PPCP methods, SGS AXYS provides multiple options for the analysis of hormones and sterols. All methods are applicable in a wide variety of matrices including aqueous, soil/sediment, biosolid, and wastewater treatment plant matrices, and detection limits are usually in the low ng/L range:

• GC-HRMS, similar to EPA 1698: Analysis of 17 hormones and 9 sterols
• LC-MS/MS method, similar to EPA 1694: Analysis of 17 hormones, alongside PPCPs if required

Our Offering

Application Spotlight

SGS AXYS provided support for Washington State Department of Ecology to test the presence and concentrations of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) and Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs) in multiple sites – Elliot Bay, Bainbridge Sound, and Bellingham Bay. This was the first time that PPCPs where tested for in sediments in Puget Sound. The data from these studies were published in Long et al. 2013 and are contributing to a growing baseline of information about PPCPs and PFASs in Puget Sound and lay a foundation for better understanding of the relationship between their concentrations in marine waters, biota, and various biotic endpoints and their sources, transport patterns, and fate. It also furthered our understanding about how to get useful data from difficult matrices.

Performance studies conducted by SGS AXYS to investigate some low surrogate recoveries and quantitation issues suggest that silicate/humic acid interactions in the sediment matrix may transform fluoroquinolone analytes into a form not captured and quantified during analysis. Some PPCP analyses appear to be heavily matrix dependent, and the use of matrix spikes and matrix spike duplicates is critical for matrix-specific troubleshooting with these samples.