Development of mass spectrometric methods for the determination of emerging pollutants in wastewater

Abstract

The presence of emerging pollutants in environmental samples is unquestionable,since urban, industrial and agricultural activities release in the aquatic environmentgreat amounts of diverse organic micropollutants over the last decade. Environmentalmonitoring is an urgent nowadays, as a part of a holistic environmental riskassessment. The main objective of this thesis was the development of highlysensitive methods for the determination of multi-class emerging pollutants with theuse of different mass spectrometric techniques.First, an introduction on the emerging pollutants is presented, since they encompassa diverse group of compounds, highlighting their wide-scope properties. Specificworkflows and techniques for their determination are then presented, focusing intarget and suspect screening by mass spectrometric techniques and especially in thedevelopment of high-resolution mass analyzers. The experimental section of thethesis consists of three parts: (i) Determination of Linear and Cyclic Siloxanes by gaschromatography hyphenated with mass spectrometry in environmental samples andevaluation of Mass Loadings and Fate in a Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greece(Chapter 3), (ii) Wide-scope quantitative target screening of 2327 emergingcontaminants in wastewater samples with Ultra-Performance Liquid ChromatographyQuadrupole-Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (UPLC-Q-ToF-HRMS/MS) (Chapter4) and (iii) Suspect screening workflow for the characterization of emerging polarorganic contaminants in wastewater samples with Ultra-Performance LiquidChromatography High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry (UPLC-HRMS/MS) (Chapter5).It is our strong belief that these studies will constitute a step forward in environmental analysis of emerging pollutants