Going Beyond the Analysis of Common Contaminants: Target, Suspect, and Non-Target Analysis of Complex Environmental Matrices by High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry

Analytical methodologies for the determination of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in sewage sludge: A critical review

“…In total, 98% of the reports reviewed employed target analysis to determine PPCPs in sewage sludge samples. However, target analysis has the drawback that only a limited number of compounds can be determined and many pollutants present are ignored [131].…”

“…This approach is able to detect any analyte present above the MDL. In addition, retrospective analysis is possible [131]. Anthropogenic compounds such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products, flame retardants, plasticizers, polymer additives and other well-known persistent organic pollutants can be identified using this approach.…”

“…These techniques serve to acquire full scan spectra and allow a retrospective analysis of emerging contaminants after the data has been acquired, while providing two essential factors for non-target analysis: accurate-mass and high-resolution [131]. The most common MS analyzers used for this purpose, such as Orbitrap or the Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) device, can be linked to different ionization sources (ESI, APPI and APCI) and different separation techniques (GC, LC and GCxGC) depending on the class of compounds to be examined [128].…”

From Pesticides to Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances: An Evaluation of Recent Targeted and Untargeted Mass Spectrometry Methods for Xenobiotics

“…These HRMS approaches provided more comprehensive assessments of the samples and expanded the view of water quality and human and environmental exposure. Old untargeted HRMS data sets are also being reprocessed by retrospectively matching features to current compound libraries. − For example, Alygizakis et al conducted a retrospective analysis of archived HRMS data to identify temporal and spatial occurrences of previously unidentified contaminants, including surfactants and transformation products of drugs . Additionally, taking advantage of archived data sets allows for the potential identification of new contaminants in a rapid and cost-effective manner.…”

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products in different types of sewage sludge

“…Both suspect and non-target analysis are based on the power and development of high-resolution mass spectrometric instruments. These techniques serve to acquire full scan spectra and allow a retrospective analysis of emerging contaminants after the data has been acquired, while providing two essential factors for non-target analysis: accurate-mass and high-resolution [131]. The most common MS analyzers used for this purpose, such as Orbitrap or the Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) device, can be linked to different ionization sources (ESI, APPI and APCI) and different separation techniques (GC, LC and GCxGC) depending on the class of compounds to be examined [128].…”