High-resolution mass spectrometry environmental applications

Charles MJ, Tondeur Y (1990), Environ. Sci. Technol. 24 1856-1860.. .Choosing between high resolution mass spectrometry and mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry environmental applications"... 

This chapter provides an overview of mass spectrometer function and operation. It describes specific instrument types with demonstrated or potential application for measuring radionuclides and surveys the application of these instruments to radionuclide detection. Finally, it discusses the circumstances under which use of mass spectrometers is advantageous, the type of mass spectrometer used for each purpose, and the conditions of sample preparation, introduction and analysis. Its perspective is from a national laboratory active in environmental and non-proliferation monitoring. It emphasizes isotope ratio measurements, but mass spectrometric measurements also provide isotope mass information. Several recent books describe elemental and isotope ratio mass spectrometry in far greater detail than is presented here (Barshick et al., 2000 De Laeter, 2001 Montaser, 1998 Nelms, 2005 Platzner, 1997 Tuniz et al., 1998). High-resolution mass spectrometry forms the basis of the mass scale used for elemental and isotopic masses (Coplen, 2001), but this application of MS falls outside the scope of this chapter. 

Buser H-R, MD Muller, C Rappe (1992) Enantioselective determination of chlordane components using chiral high-resolution gas chromatography-mass spectrometry with application to environmental samples Environ Sci Technol 26 1533-1540. 

The analytical approach applied in the PoweU et at. (2005) study represents a major advancement in our current study of the chemical structure of DOM. SDS-PAGE remains one of the few methods that wiU allow separation and purification of intact dissolved proteins proteomics, as applied by PoweU et at. (2005), is now routinely applied in the biochemical and biomedical fields but is rarely applied in the environmental sciences. A major advantage of these mass spectrometry based techniques (i.e., proteomics) is the relatively smaU quantity of material required for the analysis this opens up the possibility for analyzing peptides and proteins in total DOM with little or no pre-concentration. However, the presence of salts stUl needs to be minimized before effective mass spectra can be generated. A recent review by Mopper et at. (2007) highlights the application of high-resolution analytical techniques to study marine DOM composition, and we refer the reader to this review for a more comprehensive discussion of recent analytical advances. 

In the last three decades, there has been considerable public concern about the presence of halogenated anthropogenic compounds in the environment because of their persistence, the bioaccumulation potential, and the health risks that they bring about [13]. Examples of members of this family of xenobiotics are polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated terphenyls (PCTs) and toxaphene. Polychlorinated biphenyls were described as ubiquitous, environmentally harmful substances more than 30 years ago [4j. In addition, the presence of PCBs and toxaphene in the environment has been extensively documented [5-7]. In contrast, litde attention has been paid to polychlorinated terphenyls, which are similar to PCBs in chemical characteristics and applications. In this chapter, we discuss different methods described in the literature for the analysis of PCTs and toxaphene using high resolution gas chromatography (HRGC) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS). 

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