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Identification of PFAS in the Environment
Citation:
Strynar, M. AND J. McCord. Identification of PFAS in the Environment. SETAC NA Focus Meeting: Environmental Risk Assessment of PFAS, Durham, NC, August 12 - 15, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
PFAS are being studied in global scientific communities. The ever-changing rates of PFAS analytes and knowledge is difficult to keep up with. This invited presentation is intended to synthesize the state of the science concerning PFAS compound identification in the environment.
Description:
Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) are a topic of current and growing interest in the global scientific community. For close to two decades many environmental studies have included the environmental occurrence of PFAS such as PFOS and PFOA. Additional studies have reported on a growing number of PFAS with an ever-expanding list of compounds of interest. Hampering the job of the analyst is the growing number of PFAS analytes discovered and reported at a remarkable rate in the published literature. With the introduction of high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) as affordable bench top instrumentation the use in PFAS investigations has led to an ever-increasing portion of the total possible PFAS being detected. Such applications as suspect screening analysis (SSA) from curated PFAS lists have opened the possibility of analyte occurrence discovery. Non-targeted Analysis (NTA) and true compound discovery of additional PFAS has added to these ever-expanding analyte lists. Application of HRMS investigations to industrial use/production sites, and aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) spill/usage sites have continued to unearth novel PFAS in each new application. Using such techniques as negative mass defect, repeating units of a homologous series (CF2, CF2O, CF2CH2 …and others), diagnostic PFAS fragment ions and sequential temporal/spatial sampling has allowed for new tentative environmental PFAS discoveries. Hampering much of these international PFAS efforts is the general lack of authentic commercially available standards for unequivocal compound identification. Most studies use HRMS isotope spectral information, and MS/MS data for a weight of evidence for novel PFAS discovered. Missing from most discovered analytes is toxicological data to make informed risk-based decisions. This presentation will focus on the state of the science used for identification of PFAS in the environment and offer suggestions for advancing PFAS research beyond these barriers.
