Environmental Analysis

How to improve results by optimizing the injection, column, and detection.

This article will focus on the development of an optimized gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) method that improves upon the current EPA and European detection limit requirements for BTEX compounds and meets all other criteria described in EPA Method 524.2 for the measurement of purgeable organic compounds in water by capillary column GC–MS.

The occurrence of disinfection byproducts in natural waters poses a health risk for humans as well as aquatic organisms. This article presents a method, which was recently developed at the University of Arizona, in Tucson, Arizona, USA, for the fast and simultaneous determination of 15 regulated and unregulated disinfection byproducts.

This is the first in a series of articles exploring current topics in separation science that will be addressed at the HPLC 2017 conference in Prague, Czech Republic, from 18–22 June.

Improve results by optimizing the injection, column, and detection.

Electrophoretic concentration (EC) is an electric field-driven and environmentally friendly off-line sample preparation for charged analytes. EC was demonstrated for the enrichment of either six anionic pollutants or five cationic drugs from purified, drinking, river, or waste- water samples. EC provided analyte enrichment in 15–50 min with concentration factors of 30–249 and 12–243 for the negatively and positively charged analytes, respectively. A modification of the EC device enabled simultaneous EC and separation (SECS) of six cationic and anionic herbicides with concentration factors of 18–337 in 30 min. The potential of SECS has also been evaluated for the determination of high mobility ions in urine and the results obtained have been compared to common acetonitrile treatment of urine. SECS provided an enrichment of high mobility ions and revealed more peaks compared to the acetonitrile treatment.

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Environmental Chemistry Group, Water Science Forum, and the Separation Science Group Joint Meeting will be held on Friday 3 March 2017 at the Science Suite of the Royal Society of Chemistry, in Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, UK.

Evan Palmer-Young of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA, and Philip Stevenson of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London, UK, spoke to The Column about their work on bumblebee resistance to the trypanosome parasite Crithidia bombi and the role of chromatography in this research.

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (GBR) stretches over 2300 km and is composed of over 3000 individual reef systems. The health of the reef therefore often comes under international scrutiny. Hilton Swan from Southern Cross University in Australia has been investigating volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from the Great Barrier Reef using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). He recently spoke to The Column about this work.

The Royal Society of Chemistry’s Environmental Chemistry Group, Water Science Forum, and the Separation Science Group Joint Meeting will be held on Friday 3 March 2017 at the Science Suite of the Royal Society of Chemistry, in Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, UK.

The western honey bee population has succumbed to a host of environmental stressors. Although many investigations offer insight into the reasons for the global health decline of honey bees, this complex combination of stressors has made it difficult to pinpoint key features of disease causality. This article describes a pilot study of hives in seven geographical locations in eastern Pennsylvania.

Populations worldwide are exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that can be harmful to human health. LCGC spoke to David Megson from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, about recent developments in assessing human exposure to PCBs and chiral enantiomer fractions (EFs) in the workplace.

Water contamination has come to the forefront of global debate as a result of high profile cases such as those in Flint, Michigan, USA, or the pollution of the Ganges River in India. Koji Kosaka of the National Institute of Public Health, Japan, has investigated the contamination of the Yodo River Basin in Japan, with the precursors of the carcinogen N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA). He recently spoke with The Column about his use of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to uncover the source of contamination and the chemical precursors responsible.

This article gives a brief overview of just some of the chiral environmental studies carried out recently that cover the differing enantiomeric activity of pesticides, their environmental transformation, and the degradation of pollutants in general. They highlight some of the recent advances in chiral stationary phases (CSPs) that have enabled higher efficiency and faster separations than previously seen in this area.

Populations worldwide are exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that can be harmful to human health. The Column spoke to David Megson from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, about recent developments in assessing human exposure to PCBs and chiral enantiomer fractions (EFs) in the workplace.

Is your swimming pool clean and safe? Recreational water illness, most commonly in the form of digestive tract illness or skin, ear, or respiratory infections, is often caused by water contamination. The authors present a robust method, using solid-phase extraction and high-resolution mass spectrometry, for monitoring swimming pool water.

Single particle inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (SP-ICP-MS) is an exciting new technique for detecting and characterizing metal nanoparticles (NP) at very low concentrations. It is fast and can provide significantly more information than other traditional techniques, including particle number concentration, particle size, and size distribution, in addition to the concentration of dissolved metals in solution. The added benefit of using ICP-MS is that it can distinguish between particles of different elemental compositions. The study will investigate the use of SP-ICP-MS to track the release of ENMs into the environment and to better understand their fate and behavior specifically in drinking, surface and wastewater samples.

A brief introduction to the articles presented in this supplement.

New Developments in the Analysis of Complex Environmental Matrices

This article gives an up-to-date commentary on chiral liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry for the determination of pharmacologically active chiral compounds (cPACs) (including illicit drugs) in environmental matrices. Several applications are discussed to demonstrate the benefits of performing environmental analysis of cPACs at the enantiomeric level. Finally, future perspectives in this rapidly developing field of research are outlined.

This study focuses on United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) Method 524.3 for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in water using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS).

A rapid, high-throughput analytical method was developed and evaluated for the simultaneous determination of pesticides and environmental contaminants in fish.

The Column spoke to Rajmund Michalski from the Polish Academy of Sciences, Institute of Environmental Engineering in Zabrze, Poland, about the application of ion chromatography in speciation analysis.

The RSC Environmental Chemistry Group and the RSC Analytical Division Separation Science Group will hold a joint meeting entitled "New Developments in the Analysis of Complex Environmental Matrices" in London, UK, on 6 February 2015.

In the second of a two-part Q&A, The Column spoke to Paul A. Sutton, a research fellow in the Petroleum and Environmental Geochemistry Group at Plymouth University (Plymouth, UK), about his experience with high temperature gas chromatography (HTGC), and his best practices for analysts in the lab.