Chromatography Forum

Hi folks-
Those of you in the USA must have heard of the spill of this compound in West Virginia, and the very little information available on it. Our lab has been asked about analysis, and I can't even find a source for a standard. Does anyone have experience with it? Restek posted on it: http://blog.restek.com/?p=10938

Thanks, TW

Hi folks-
Those of you in the USA must have heard of the spill of this compound in West Virginia, and the very little information available on it. Our lab has been asked about analysis, and I can't even find a source for a standard. Does anyone have experience with it? Restek posted on it: http://blog.restek.com/?p=10938

Thanks, TW

We ordered some neat material through either Fisher or Thomas Scientific but were told there was a two week back log on shipments.

Several places that wanted us to analyze for it ended up not sending samples after they saw how low the toxicity actually is. Some are using EPA 8270, EPA522, or EPA 524 methods for analysis but you won't find any listed methods for it.

The news reports from the water company offered a reporting limit of 1 ppm, which sounds like a direct aqueous injection to me. Likely a pretty unreliable test.

We have done 2-ethyl hexanol (apparently used before the MCHM) by purge and trap here - I do not recall what limits we got.

I expect the damn compound will be showing up in oddball test requests in the next few years, with some sloppy and hard to justify detection limits.

From the news reports it sounds like the most sensitive detector is the nose. People were complaining of the smell even though the water system says it was a non-detect.
An artificial beagle nose anyone?

From the news reports it sounds like the most sensitive detector is the nose. People were complaining of the smell even though the water system says it was a non-detect.
An artificial beagle nose anyone?

Or just get one of these

http://www.atasgl.com/html/phaser_about.html

Found an article about the Cincinnati Water Works, they were down to 10 ppb detection:

http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/water/news ... cal-spill/

Also Restek now has a standard: http://blog.restek.com/?p=11094

Restek gave up on purge and trap, and did a microextraction followed by GCMS:

http://blog.restek.com/?p=11124

From the news reports it sounds like the most sensitive detector is the nose. People were complaining of the smell even though the water system says it was a non-detect.
An artificial beagle nose anyone?

Or just get one of these

http://www.atasgl.com/html/phaser_about.html

*thare are numerous non-toxic volatiles that comprise the odor profile of the leaked compound---that explains why they observed "negative" toxin results;however, the smell continues to be awful. Rem'ber, in the human olfaction and taste buds---75% of how something "smells" is related to "taste". : > )

From the report in C&E News some testers on a panel could detect the MCHM at 1 ppb. Cincinnatti water system was reporting down to 50 ppb. The method used wasn't mentioned.