Impact/Purpose:

Detect contaminants by LC/MS technologies in order to protect water systems and environments.

Description:

This project will demonstrate ways to detect contaminants by LC/MS technologies in order to protect water systems and environments. Contaminants can affect drinking water usage and limit acceptable sources of ground and reservoir supplies. The analytical method to enhance the screening of a water sample through improved analytical techniques utilizing LC/MS and MS/MS library technologies will be discussed. The need for identification of a wide range of organic pollutants not amenable to routine EPA methods, such as 525, is becoming more imperative and with the advent of new analytical systems is being realized. In light of this issue, US EPA Region 5 Chicago Regional Laboratory (CRL) is collaborating with the US EPA Office of Pesticide Programs, state labs and Waters Corporation, under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), to develop a quick and robust method, which will detect specific harmful agricultural, industrial and pharmaceutical compounds in drinking water. This method is based on developing a searchable mass spectral library system for Liquid Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry (LC/MS and LC/MS/MS) analysis. Many harmful organic compounds of interest, such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and drugs of abuse, are nonvolatile and therefore not amenable to Gas Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS), for which MS libraries are in widespread use. Data will be presented to validate the use of the library system that has been verified by a few laboratories to demonstrate that transferable LC/MS libraries are practical and possible.

Record Details: