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E. Rosenberg:
"Environmental analysis by Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry: New Targets, new Possibilities";
Keynote Lecture: Analytix-2013, Sozhou, China; 2013-03-21 - 2013-03-23.

There is an enormous environmental pressure on water bodies due to a more intensive quantitative use (for irrigation, drinking water and industrial purposes) and also a larger risk of contamination by man-made chemicals and activities. Analytical methods for monitoring water quality are well established, but focus on `conventional´ environmental pollutants which often are only of historical importance, such as chlorinated pesticides, PAHs and PCBs or complexing agents. More recent changes and developments in personal and industrial use patterns, have, however, led to the introduction of newer anthropogenic compounds into the (aqueous) environment. Examples of these so-called `emerging pollutants´ are pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), along with modern pesticides which can increasingly be found in surface water samples. Due to the polar nature of most of these compounds and of their degradation products, liquid chromatography with mass spectrometric detection (LC-MS) is the method of choice.
The recent development of (ultra-)high-performance LC-MS analytical techniques has allowed to both increase the sensitivity in target analysis (mostly performed in triple-quadrupole instruments), as well as detection and identification capabilities in non-target analysis. In the latter case it is mostly the use of high mass resolution (HR) and exact mass determination achievable with modern TOF instruments, or the increase in structural information brought about by hybrid instruments, such as Q-TOF (quadrupole-time of flight), TOF-TOF or IT-TOF (ion trap-time of flight) instruments. These offer unique opportunities in the analysis and structural elucidation of modern, sometimes hitherto undetected environmental pollutants. Given the enormous amount of data produced by even one single chromatographic run with HR-MS, powerful chemometric techniques and strategies are required to extract the relevant information and find the `needle in the haystack´. This presentation will discuss the potential and the application of modern high resolution, high performance LC-MS techniques for the analysis of emerging environmental pollutants.