Citation:

Taha, H., R. Aalizadeh, N. Aygizakis, J. Antignac, H. Arp, R. Bade, Nancy C. Baker, L. Belova, L. Bijlsma, E. Bolton, W. Brack, A. Celma, W. Chen, T. Cheng, P. Chirsir, L. Cirka, L. D'Agostino, Y. Djoumbou-Feunang, V. Dulio, S. Fischer, P. Gago-Ferrero, A. Galani, B. Geueke, N. Glowacka, J. Gluge, K. Groh, S. Grosse, P. Haglund, P. Hakkinen, S. Hale, F. Hernandez, E. Janssen, T. Jonkers, K. Kiefer, M. Kirchner, J. Koschorreck, M. Krauss, J. Krier, M. Lamoree, M. Letzel, T. Letzel, Q. Li, J. Little, Y. Liu, D. Lunderberg, J. Martin, A. McEachran, J. McLean, C. Meier, J. Meijer, F. Menger, C. Merino, J. Muncke, M. Muschket, AND M. Neumann. The NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE): facilitating European and worldwide collaboration on suspect screening in high resolution mass spectrometry. Environmental Sciences Europe. Springer Nature, New York, NY, 34:104, (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12302-022-00680-6

Impact/Purpose:

In environmental analytical chemistry, suspect screening typically involves the use of high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) to search for the presence of chemicals in environmental samples based on suspect lists, using the exact mass as a first step in the annotation of detected features. Suspect screening has grown in popularity over the last few years as an efficient way to complement traditional target analysis approaches, where a reference standard is required, without performing a time-intensive non-target screening of the tens of thousands of unknown features typical in environmental samples using extensive compound databases. Several publications describe these approaches in greater detail. The NORMAN Association (a network of reference laboratories for monitoring of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) in the environment—hereafter “NORMAN”) ran the first non-target screening (NTS) collaborative trial on river water in 2013/2014. The results showed that participants tentatively identified roughly as many chemicals via both suspect and target screening methods, but very few via NTS. This early effort demonstrated that suspect screening approaches were more efficient and popular across the 19 participating institutes, offering a much higher annotation rate than non-target identification. Since then, NORMAN has run further collaborative trials involving suspect screening, including dust, passive samplers and biota. Suspect screening has also gained popularity beyond environmental studies and matrices, expanding recently to biomonitoring.

Description:

Background: The NORMAN Association (https://www.norman-network.com/) initiated the NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE; https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/) in 2015, following the NORMAN collaborative trial on non-target screening of environmental water samples by mass spectrometry. Since then, this exchange of information on chemicals that are expected to occur in the environment, along with the accompanying expert knowledge and references, has become a valuable knowledge base for “suspect screening” lists. The NORMAN-SLE now serves as a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) chemical information resource worldwide. Results: The NORMAN-SLE contains 99 separate suspect list collections (as of May 2022) from over 70 contributors around the world, totalling over 100,000 unique substances. The substance classes include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pharmaceuticals, pesticides, natural toxins, high production volume substances covered under the European REACH regulation (EC: 1272/2008), priority contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and regulatory lists from NORMAN partners. Several lists focus on transformation products (TPs) and complex features detected in the environment with various levels of provenance and structural information. Each list is available for separate download. The merged, curated collection is also available as the NORMAN Substance Database (NORMAN SusDat). Both the NORMAN-SLE and NORMAN SusDat are integrated within the NORMAN Database System (NDS). The individual NORMAN-SLE lists receive digital object identifiers (DOIs) and traceable versioning via a Zenodo community (https://zenodo.org/communities/norman-sle), with a total of >40,000 unique views, >50,000 unique downloads and 40 citations (May 2022). NORMAN-SLE content is progressively integrated into large open chemical databases such as PubChem (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/) and the US EPA’s CompTox Chemicals Dashboard (https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard/), enabling further access to these lists, along with the additional functionality and calculated properties these resources offer. PubChem has also integrated significant annotation content from the NORMAN-SLE, including a classification browser (https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/classification/#hid=101). Conclusions: The NORMAN-SLE offers a specialized service for hosting suspect screening lists of relevance for the environmental community in an open, FAIR manner that allows integration with other major chemical resources. These efforts foster the exchange of information between scientists and regulators, supporting the paradigm shift to the “one chemical, one assessment” approach. New submissions are welcome via the contacts provided on the NORMAN-SLE website (https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/).

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