Non-target and suspect characterisation of organic contaminants in ambient air – Part 1: Combining a novel sample clean-up method with comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography

Abstract. Long-term monitoring of regulated organic chemicals, such as legacy persistent pollutants (POPs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), in ambient air provides valuable information about the compounds' environmental fate well temporal spatial trends. This is foundation to evaluate effectiveness national international regulations for priority pollutants. Extracts high-volume samples, collected on glass fibre filters (GFF particle phase) polyurethane foam plugs (PUF gaseous phase), targeted analyses POPs are commonly cleaned by treatment with concentrated sulfuric acid, resulting extracts clean from most interfering compounds matrices that suitable multi-quantitative trace analysis. Such standardised methods, however, severely restrict number analytes quantification not applicable when targeting new emerging some may be less stable under acid treatment. Recently developed suspect non-target screening analytical strategies (SUS NTS, respectively) shown effective evaluation tools aimed at identifying a high concern. These strategies, combining highly sophisticated technology extensive data interpretation statistics, already widely accepted sciences investigations various matrices, but their application samples still very limited. In order apply SUS NTS identification contaminants an adapted more wide-scope sample clean-up method needed compared traditional method, which uses acid. Analysis raw without would generate contamination system, especially PUF matrix-based compounds, thus interfered mass spectra detection limits unacceptable analysis samples. this study, novel has been applied real facilitates simultaneous target, analyses. The scope efficiency were quantitatively evaluated covering wide range polarities (logP 2–11), including POPs, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), chlorinated pesticides currently used (CUPs). addition, reduction selection comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography separation low-resolution time-of-flight spectrometric (GC × GC-LRMS) Combination newly procedure strategy enabled prioritisation over 600 interest phase (on GFF) 850 PUF) out 25 000 chemical features detected dataset. Of these, 50 individual identified confirmed reference standards, 80 probable structure, 774 assigned compound classes. dataset available here, 11 hitherto unknown halogenated detected. yet listed spectral libraries.