Ultra-Sensitive and Rapid Analysis of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Water

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are chemicals widely used in consumer products because of their unique and desirable chemical properties. Because of widespread usage and environmental persistence, legacy PFAS are ubiquitous in the environment, and new fluorochemicals are being found in the environment frequently. Public interest and concern has increased pressure to develop comprehensive methods for sensitive analysis in different types of water. We discuss a method for 35 PFAS compounds analyzed in nonpotable waters that is sensitive, robust, and precise, and has high-throughput capabilities because of the fast sample preparation that makes it ideal for laboratories looking to run at high capacity. The analyte lists overlap with American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) 7979 and Draft Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 8327, with some additions of emerging PFAS, such as Adona and the components of F53B because of their increasing presence in the environment. Sample preparation was minimal with 1:1 dilution with methanol followed by filtration. Compound separation was achieved on a 1260 liquid chromatograph (LC) and analyzed with an Agilent 6495 triple quadrupole LC-MS instrument. Compounds were quantitated with isotopic dilution to obtain the highest accuracy and confidence. Excellent method spike recoveries and robustness when running hundreds of wastewater samples were seen, proving this methodology is suitable for use in a high-throughput laboratory with high data accuracy and good sensitivity.