Analytical Methods for Combined Exposure Assessment to Multiple Organic Chemicals via the Environment

Abstract

To assess the combined exposure of chemicals, it is necessary to comprehensively measure various chemicals in environmental media. The main instruments used to measure organic compounds are gas chromatography or liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Selected reaction monitoring (SRM) measurements with triple quadrupole mass spectrometers are often used for simultaneous multi-target analysis. Nevertheless, because of the possibility of retrospective analysis, AIQS-GC, an automated identification and quantification system using GCMS scan mode, and AIQS-LC, using data-independent analysis (DIA) with LC-QTofMS, have been developed and are becoming popular. On the other hand, strategies to evaluate multiple exposures include filtering only substances with a common structure from measurements of non-targeted analyses or purifying only compounds with a similar structure from within a mixture.