VASE-GC-MS Detects Personal Care Products in Fish

Researchers set out to combine vacuum-assisted sorbent extraction (VASE) with a small-scale miniaturized matrix solid-phase dispersion (MSPD) method the team had already developed, so they could measure five different classes of personal care product (PSP) chemicals in fish samples all at once using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The authors of the corresponding paper, published in the journal Chemosphere,¹ report that this is the first time anyone has used VASE this way to look for multiple personal care product residues in fish.

What Are Emerging Contaminants (such as Personal Care Products), and How Do They End Up in Fish?

Emerging contaminants (ECs), a group that includes PCPs, are man-made or naturally occurring chemicals and biological substances that scientists have started finding in the environment and worry might be harmful to people or ecosystems. They can come from nature or from human activity, and they're showing up more frequentlyin water, soil, and air. This category includes medications and personal care products, PFAS, natural toxins, and other substances found in the environment whose effects on health and ecosystems are not yet well understood. Because they are so new on scientists' radar, these substances are not routinely tested for, and there are not yet any government regulations controlling them.^2-4 Research has shown that PCPs can be found almost everywhere in bodies of water around the world, mainly because they keep getting flushed out through wastewater. Because of this, they've been getting more attention lately as emerging contaminants, since they could pose risks to both aquatic life and human health.^5-7Fish can pick up these contaminants both from the water they live in and the food they eat. In addition, more contamination can sneak in while the fish is being processed, handled, packaged, and shipped for sale.⁸

Does the New VASE-GC-MS Method Work Well?

To fine-tune and test the method, the researchers used tilapia and salmon, since one is naturally low in fat and the other high in fat, which let them check how well the method worked across different types of fish and whether fat content threw off the results. They also checked how eco-friendly the method was using standard "greenness" scoring tools. Finally, to show the method actually works in practice, they tested it on fish bought from stores.¹

To get the method working as well as possible, the researchers fine-tuned several settings for the VASE technique, such as how long and how hot to run the extraction, how much empty space to leave above the sample, how much salt and solvent to add, and the temperature and timing for releasing the trapped chemicals. They then tested the method on tilapia and salmon, and it performed well. The results were reliably consistent (R² above 0.96), and the method could detect very small amounts of most target chemicals (as low as 0.001 to 0.552 micrograms per gram of fish) though methyl paraben was an exception. It also recovered 73 to 93.8% of the chemicals present, and the results were consistent from test to test, except for one chemical, octocrylene, which was a bit more variable.¹

Compared to an earlier method that used solid-phase microextraction (SPME) fibers (which could only detect chemicals down to 0.01–1.01 micrograms per gram), this new VASE method was noticeably more sensitive. The older SPME method also ran into trouble because the fish tissue itself interfered with the readings for most chemicals in both fish types. The new VASE method avoided this problem almost entirely; only three chemicals in salmon showed any meaningful interference from the fish matrix.1

Is the New VASE-GC-MS Greener and More Practical than Previous Methods for Detecting Personal Care Product Residues in Fish?

Finally, the researchers checked how environmentally friendly and practical the method was, using three established scoring tools: AGREE, the Analytical Eco-Scale, and BAGI, and would report that the method “fulfilled the requirements for consideration as a green and practical analytical approach, making it suitable for routine analysis and the monitoring of PCP residues in aquatic organisms with varying lipid content.”¹

“The developed VASE-GC-MS method,” write the authors of the paper,¹ “represents a green and practical analytical approach for the screening and determination of PCP residues in fish matrices with varying lipid content.”

References

1. Thapa, B.; Ocaña-Rios, I.; Nascimento, L. E. S. et al. Determination of Personal Care Products in Fish Using Vacuum-Assisted Sorbent Extraction Coupled to Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry. Chemosphere 2026, 411, 145062. DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2026.145062
2. Puri, M.; Gandhi, K.; Kumar. M. S. Emerging Environmental Contaminants: A Global Perspective on Policies and Regulations. J. Environ. Manag.2023, 332, 117344. DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.117344
3. Wang, F.; Xiang, L.; Sze-Yin, K. et al.Emerging Contaminants: A One Health Perspective. Innovation2024, 5, 4. DOI: 10.1016/j.xinn.2024.100612
4. Sauvé, S.; Desrosiers, M. A Review of What Is an Emerging Contaminant. Chem. Cent. J.2014, 8, 15. DOI: 10.1186/1752-153X-8-15
5. Nishmitha, P. S.; Akhilghosh, K. A.; Aiswriya, V. P. et al. Understanding Emerging Contaminants in Water and Wastewater: A Comprehensive Review on Detection, Impacts, and Solutions. J. Hazard. Mater. Adv.2025, 18, 100755. DOI: 10.1016/j.hazadv.2025.100755
6. Ocaña-Rios, I.; Peña-Alvarez, A.; Zuñiga-Perez, I. et al. Trace Analysis of UV Filters and Musks in Living Fish by in vivo SPME-GC-MS. Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 2019, 411, 3209-3218. DOI: 10.1007/s00216-019-01791-5
7. Wilkinson, J. L.; Thornhill, I.; Oldenkamp, R. et al. Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products in the Aquatic Environment: How Can Regions At Risk Be Identified in the Future? Environ. Toxicol. Chem. 2024, 43, 575-588. DOI: 10.1002/etc.5763
8. Dahle, S. V.W.; Westavik, H.; Sandberg, M. G. et al. Safe Production of Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar); SINTEF Ocean AS,2010. https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2490791