Carboxyl functionalized sorbent based solid-phase extraction for sensitive determination of endocrine disrupting chemicals in bottled water, juice and milk

•A novel carboxyl functionalized porous polymer (PDA-DPBP) was synthesized.•PDA-DPBP showed excellent adsorption capacity for endocrine disrupting chemicals.•A sensitive method for detection of EDCs in water, juice and milk was established.•The adsorption can be ascribed to hydrogen bonding, pore filling and π-π interaction. Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) pose a serious threat to human health even at extremely low concentration. Three carboxyl functionalized porous polymers (PDA-DPBP, PTCDA-DPBP and ODPA-DPBP) were synthesized for the first time and employed as solid-phase extraction sorbent to enrich phenolic EDCs at trace level. Compared with PTCDA-DPBP, ODPA-DPBP and corresponding carboxyl-free counterpart (PC-DPBP), PDA-DPBP delivered superior enrichment efficiency for the phenolic EDCs, which can be ascribed to the strong hydrogen bonding, pore filling, hydrophobic interaction and π-π interaction between PDA-DPBP and phenolic EDCs. Coupled with high performance liquid chromatography, phenolic EDC residues in bottled water, juice and milk samples were enriched and determined. At the optimum conditions, the PDA-DPBP based method provided a good linear response in the range of 0.04–100ng mL−1 for bottled water, 0.07–100ng mL−1 for juice and 0.15–500ng mL−1 for milk samples. The detection limits (S/N=3) were 0.01–0.04, 0.02–0.06 and 0.05–0.10ng mL−1 for bottled water, juice and milk, respectively. The method recoveries were in the range from 81.6% to 116%, with RSDs ≤ 7.7%. This work provides an attractive and reliable alternative method for sensitive determination of phenolic EDCs.