Fast Selective Detection of Polar Brominated Disinfection Byproducts in Drinking Water Using Precursor Ion Scans

Abstract

Brominated disinfection byproducts (DBPs), formed from the reaction of disinfectant(s) with natural organic matter and bromide in raw water, are generally more cytotoxic and genotoxic than their chlorinated analogues. Brominated DBPs have been intensively studied over the past 35 years, yet only a fraction of the total organic bromine formed during disinfection has been identified. A significant portion of the unaccounted total organic bromine may be attributed to polar/highly polar brominated DBPs. In this work, a method for fast selective detection of polar/ highly polar brominated DBPs in drinking water was developed using negative ion electrospray ionization-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (ESI-tqMS) by setting precursor ion scans of m/z 79 and 81. This method was conducted without liquid chromatography separation. The results demonstrate that the ESI-tqMS precursor ion scan is an effective tool for the selective detection of electrospray ionizable bromine-containing compounds in a complex mixture. Many polar/ highly polar bromine-containing DBPs were tentatively found in two drinking water samples, and some of them may be new brominated DBPs that have not been previously reported. This method was also extended for the selective detection of polar bromine-containing compounds/contaminants in groundwater, surface water and wastewater.

Characterization of Unknown Brominated Disinfection Byproducts during Chlorination Using Ultrahigh Resolution Mass Spectrometry

“…The Br-DBPs detected in this study fall in a molecular mass range from 200 to 500 Da, and may be rich in carboxyl groups, which make these polar Br-DBPs suitable for analysis with negative ion ESI-MS. Recently, Zhang et al 11 successfully developed the PIS method using ESI-tqMS for fast selective detection of polar Br-DBPs and studied the formation of new and unknown Br-DBPs during chlorination. 23 They detected 38 ion clusters of possible Br-DBPs, five of which were confirmed or proposed as brominated acetic acids, 11 could be confirmed or proposed to be identified chemical structures, and 22 were bromine-containing compounds with unknown molecular formula.…”

Comparative toxicity of new halophenolic DBPs in chlorinated saline wastewater effluents against a marine alga: Halophenolic DBPs are generally more toxic than haloaliphatic ones

“…All the samples were kept in the cultivation chamber as aforementioned for 6 d, and then filtered through a 0.45 mm filter to remove algal cells. Sample 1 was pretreated following Zhang et al (2008) procedure and analyzed by UPLC/ESI-tqMS directly (Zhai and Zhang, 2011) (SI). Sample 2 first underwent 12 h of alkaline hydrolysis and then 8 h of enzymatic w a t e r r e s e a r c h 6 5 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 6 4 e7 2 hydrolysis with b-glucosidase before the pretreatment and UPLC/ESI-tqMS analyses.…”

Characterization of unknown iodinated disinfection byproducts during chlorination/chloramination using ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry

“…However, recent studies have shown that a significant portion of unknown halogen containing DBPs would be polar/highly polar (Zhang et al, 2008;Ding and Zhang, 2009;Zhang et al, 2012a;Zhang et al, 2014). Ding and Zhang (2009) have successfully identified 17 polar/highly polar I-DBPs using the precursor ion scan (PIS) method via electrospray ionization-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (ESI-tqMS).…”