Extraction Efficiency of Synthetic Musks Compounds from Sewage Sludge

Synthetic musk compounds (musks) represent a class of synthetic fragrance additives which are widely used as personal care and household products. Musks released to the environment mainly from anthropogenic sources could be accumulated in sewage sludge from wastewater treatment plants. Musk compounds might induce unprecedented physiological changes like damage to reproduction mechanism of cells. Therefore, monitoring and treatment of these compounds in the environment should be required. Prior reliable analyses, a good recovery of musks from sludge has to be proved. This work was conducted to compare the extraction efficiencies of 11 musk compounds from sludge using two methods. Using acetone-hexane mixture (1:1) in Method 1, the recovery of 11 musks were 0 - 66.4%. When using ethanol, sodium acetate buffer and hexane (1:1:1) in Method 2, the extraction efficiencies were improved and average recovery of musks ranged 88.5 - 112.2% except cashmeran (49.7%). Satisfied recoveries of musks obtained in this work indicated that Method 2 could be used for the extraction of musks from sludges prior their analyses by a gas chromatography mass spectrometry.