Liquid Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry in Environmental Analysis

Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) has expanded the analytical framework for the analysis of polar organic contaminants in complex matrices primarily through advances in high-resolution mass spectrometry, ion mobility spectrometry, evolving repository databases, and data mining software. Over the last 10 years, the analytical trends toward a comprehensive characterization of emerging environmental contaminants along with their degradation and transformation products have driven the move from target analysis of few tens of compounds to wide-scope target screening, as well as the development of strategies aimed at suspect screening of ‘known unknowns’ and the more challenging nontarget analysis for the identification of ‘unknown unknowns’. In this context, there is also an urgent need to give objective and unambiguous evidence of the confidence level of identification from a large list of tentatively identified substances, as well as to automate the evaluation process toward a more reproducible and harmonized approach. This article represents a third edition of a previous manuscript by Mattarozzi and Careri,(1) which was updated to take into account the huge progress in MS instrumentation and related methodologies and also advances in environmental analytical chemistry. In this article, among the environmental applications of LC-MS, current and innovative approaches for the analysis of selected classes of emerging pollutants, such as micro- and nanoplastics, per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, and transformation products in environmental samples are discussed, attempting to have a global coverage on the most recent research studies regarding the development of methodologies for the contaminants of high concern for the environment.