Application Notes: Environmental

Due to the mutagenic and carcinogenic properties of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the determination of these analytes is an important field in environmental analytical chemistry.

Odor causing compounds can find their way into drinking water from a number of sources. One of the most common compounds causing a "musty" or "earthy" smell is geosmin, which is released when microbes such as blue-green algae and actinobacteria die.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are one chemical group that has been linked to increase ozone levels. When present in indoor spaces at high enough levels they can produce sick building syndrome symptoms in people.

Eosin Y is an important tracer in groundwater studies for determining water migration paths and identifying the distribution of environmental pollutants.

Gel permeation chromatography (GPC) is a very effective sample clean-up technique, key to an accurate and sensitive analysis of pesticide, PCBs, mycotoxin, PAHs, and other similar compounds.

The U.S. EPA Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water released Method 524.3, "Measurement of Purgeable Organic Compounds in Water by Capillary Column Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry, Version 1.0," in the Federal Register on August 3rd, 2009 (1, 2). This new method contains an updated list of 76 VOCs that includes fuel oxygenates and two emerging contaminants of interest.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is widely used in high production volume manufacturing of polycarbonate plastics (for example, food containers and plastic bottles) and epoxy resins (1).

This paper describes the use of the AB SCIEX TripleTOF 5600 LC–MS-MS system for the screening and identification of unexpected contaminants in lake water, demonstrating the value of high-resolution, accurate-mass data, and retrospective data processing for the identification of nontargeted compounds.

The U.S. EPA Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water released Method 524.3, "Measurement of Purgeable Organic Compounds in Water by Capillary Column Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry, Version 1.0," in the Federal Register on August 3rd, 2009 (1, 2).

Glyphosate (GP) is a non-selective, postemergence herbicide widely used for weed and vegetative control.

The determination of PCBs, as well as other environmental contaminants, in fish tissue requires extensive sample cleanup prior to analysis by gas chromatography with an electron capture detector (GC-ECD).

ISOLUTE EPH columns have been developed to fractionate pentane or hexane based soil extracts into aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbon fractions (C8–C40 aliphatics, C10–C22 aromatics).

N-methyl carbamates (NMCs) are widely used as pesticides and have been reported in the environment and food.

In this study, data was collected to evaluate carryover of target analytes in subsequent blanks following high concentration samples.

The GC–MS analysis of volatile organics in drinking water according to United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) Method 524.2 offers a number of analytical challenges, ranging from water handling to very low target compound concentrations.

Cyanide, an environmental contaminant, can cause serious health effects including goiters, hypothyroidism and some neuromuscular diseases. Cyanide wastewater sources include the plating and mining industries, burning of coal and plastics and effluent from publicly owned treatment works (POTW).

Increase throughput of the HPLC method for triazine herbicides by employing ultra high-speed liquid chromatography at elevated temperature on a heat stable Thermo Scientific Hypercarb column.

The analysis of Bisphenol A using UCT Enviro-Clean® C18 cartridges and UCT Selectra® Phenyl columns using LC–MS-MS is discussed.

The U.S. EPA Office of Groundwater and Drinking Water released Method 524.3, "Measurement of Purgeable Organic Compounds in Water by Capillary Column Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry, Version 1.0," in the Federal Register on August 3rd, 2009 (1, 2).

Smokeless tobacco can contain thousands of analytes, making it an extremely difficult matrix for identification of pesticide residues.

Cyanide, an environmental contaminant, can cause serious health effects including goiters, hypothyroidism, and some neuromuscular diseases.

EPA Method 8260 provides for the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOC) in various solid waste matrices.

A recent poll indicated that millions of consumers were "very" concerned that their public water supplies may be contaminated with trace amounts of pharmaceuticals (1).

This article describes the use of combined ion chromatography-mass spectrometry (IC–MS) and ion chromatography-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (IC-ICP–MS) to analyse potentially harmful compounds.

The separation of structurally diverse analytes is often complicated by chance coelutions with other analytes or with matrix related compounds. Often the column is blamed, but while such coelutions make analysis difficult they do not necessarily indicate a faulty column, poor chromatography or method design.

Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are carcinogenic condensed ring aromatic compounds widely found as trace pollutants in waters, wastes, air particulates, soil and foods. PAHs can be routinely monitored using HPLC with a combination of UV and fluorescence detection as prescribed in EPA methods 550.1, 610 and 8310.

Polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) are particularly relevant in the analysis of environmental pollution because of their ubiquity, toxicity and persistence. Consequently, the PAHs have become the most intensively studied pollutants in environmental analysis.

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are bioaccumulativetoxic compounds that are used as flame retardants. They have high boiling points and low thermal stability which makes analysis by GC–MS challenging. Additional bromines increase the thermal instability. A method was developed to analyze for polybrominated biphenyls using a large volume injection, short analytical column, and high mass tuning algorithm on the Thermo Scientific DSQ II with detection by EI Single Ion Monitoring (SIM).