LC/MS/MS - what for??

[cjm]

I'd like to throw out a question, and hopefully this is the right forum in which to do so. I am researching method 537, perfluorinated alkyl acids in drinking water. If you google "hoosick falls ny water" you'll see why. More to the point, method 537 was the test of choice when the EPA issued the UCMR3 when it comes to PFAAs. At first it looked like there's going to be plenty of work from all over, everyone testing for PFAAs but not many labs doing it. But I'm not so sure now. It's certainly a hot topic in NY, but it turns out hits at the levels discussed are not that typical...and there's not yet word on regulatory limits or requirements for monitoring.

My question is would 537 be worthwhile to get into for a company that currently has no LC/MS/MS instrumentation? And what other work could be had with this type of instrumentation? If you had money to invest in new instrumentation what would you do?

[Steve Reimer]

PFAAs are definitely on a hot list at EPA. It could all die out quickly though, if it is found in only a few places.

The instrumentation is pricey to get to the 10 to 20 ppt required so it would be good to have another use for it. We have been asked to look into it but so far the $400k is beyond our budget.

[cjm]

I suspect PFAAs are only going to show up in isolated spots. They're presence and high concentration is only attributable to generation sources, plants that manufacture ptfe products, etc. Another concern is this village in NY has already proven that giant charcoal filters efficiently remove the chemicals from the drinking water. So what happens when these filters are standard issue for these hot spots?

So if you had 400k to spend on new instrumentation for environmental work would you invest in an LC/MS/MS system or would you look at something else? Method 544 comes to mind, although it could be the same case where it's a hot topic, found in a few places, and then nothing comes of it. I'm curious now about triple quad MS and it's potential. Again, if there's little market then I have little interest.

[James_Ball]

We purchased one for UCMR2 to do the EPA535 method. Try as we might we missed one compound low 2% on the final PE sample and could not get certified so it has become something that runs a few specialty samples from time to time.

We picked up a nutraceutical client at about the same time and I have been able to use it for some of that work and have been using it for low level analysis of Picric acid in water and soon for BAC anti microbial testing. But these are limited numbers of samples. If we could just get EPA to approve LCMSMS for things like Carbamate pesticides and Glyphosate in drinking water then we could get away from the post column fluorescence methods.

Another thing to consider when doing the PFAA method is you have to eliminate the PTFE lines on the instrument because they can cause contamination of the system, which is another small expense on top of the instrument.