Environmental analytical chemists have the challenge of investigating thousands of potential organic pollutants that may be present in the aquatic environment. High resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) hyphenated to chromatography offers the possibility to detect a large number of contaminants without pre-selection of analytes due to its accurate-mass full-spectrum acquisition at good sensitivity. Interestingly, large screening can be made even without reference standards, as the valuable information provided by HRMS allows the tentative identification of the compound detected. This allows the investigation of large number of compounds taking advantage of the valuable information provided by HRMS.In this work, hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight (QTOF) MS has been combined with both liquid and gas chromatography (using a unique instrument) for screening of around 1,500 compounds in waters. After a generic and simple solid-phase extraction, the sample extracts were analyzed by LC-ESI-QTOF MS and GC-APCI-QTOF MS. The screening was qualitatively validated for around 250 compounds at three levels (0.02, 0.1 and 0.5 �g/L), and the screening detection limits (SDL) were established. Pesticides, pharmaceuticals from many different therapeutic classes (antibiotic included), personal care products, phenols, and illicit drugs, among other groups of compounds could be searched by using this approach. The screening procedure was applied to different types of water, allowing the identification of a high number of organic contaminants.Up to our knowledge, this is the most universal approach reported until now for large screening of organic contaminants within a wide range of polarity of volatility in waters.

Advancing towards universal screening for organic micro-pollutants in waters by combined use of GC and LC coupled to HRMS

248th National Meeting (2014)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.