Earth Day 2026: Assessing Marine Pollution and Ecosystem Impacts Through LC-HR-MS/MS Analysis of Anthropogenic Compounds in Oceanic Dissolved Organic Matter
Our "Earth Day" coverage continues with a look at how LC-HR-MS/MS can track how human-made chemical pollution is harming ocean ecosystems.
Intensifying population growth, urbanization, industrialization, and consumer-driven activities have led to a surge of chemical pollutants entering marine environments, threatening biodiversity, disrupting food webs, and degrading essential ecosystem services. Fortunately, combining test results from multiple laboratories and studies provides an exciting new way to track human-made chemicals and study organic matter across the globe.1
A research team recently applied non-targeted liquid chromatography–high-resolution tandem mass spectrometry (LC-HR-MS/MS) to investigate the extent of anthropogenic organic contaminants within the dissolved organic matter (DOM) pool. By integrating 21 publicly available datasets spanning over 2300 samples from diverse marine regions, the research overcomes the spatial limitations of individual LC-MS studies. Using standardized chromatographic methods, the analysis reveals that xenobiotic compounds are not only widespread across coastal, coral reef, and open ocean systems, but also form a significant fraction of marine DOM. These findings underscore the growing environmental burden of chemical pollution in oceans and highlight the need for large-scale monitoring strategies to better understand and mitigate their ecological and biogeochemical impacts.
LCGC International spoke to Daniel Petras and Jarmo Kalinski, two of the authors of the resulting paper published in Nature Geoscience,2 about the work.