Qualitative analysis to detect the presence of emerging contaminants in environmental matrices using HPLC-HRMS

Abstract

In the last decades, due to the growth of world population, there has been an increase in the using of lifestyle compounds, such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, UV-filter, sweeteners and industrial products, e.g. solvents, pesticides, herbicides and flame retardants. This phenomenon has led to a spreading of these molecules into the environment, that could cause significant damages to the wildlife with side effects for the human health. In this work it is presented an approach to untargeted screening of water and sediment samples to detect any kind of emerging pollutants. In order to understand the different distribution of the analytes in different areas of Venice Lagoon, these areas have been divided into two classes: “uncontaminated sites” and “contaminated sites”. The method was performed based on previous works by trying to detect as much molecules as possible. The developed method provides three steps: (1) SPE extraction (using Oasis HLB) to extract analytes from the sample, (2) HPLC-HRMS (by HPLC-LTQ Orbitrap XL) to separate and identify the molecules, (3) data analysis (using the software RStudio) to confirm the identity of analytes and to understand data from an environmental point of view. Through this approach it has been possible to detect the classes of analytes and characterize different environmental matrixes from various areas of the Venice Lagoon. Not only can this approach be used for the detection of emerging contaminants, but also for other classes of analytes and their corresponding metabolites.