Nontarget screening using passive air and water sampling with a level II fugacity model to identify unregulated environmental contaminants

Abstract

It is thought that there are many unregulated anthropogenic chemicals in the environment. For risk assessment of chemicals, it is essential to estimate the predicted environmental concentrations. As an effort of identifying residual organic contaminants in air and water in Korea, nontarget screening using two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC x GC-TOFMS) was conducted at 10 sites using polyurethane foam passive air sampler and at 6 sites using polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) passive water sampler in three different seasons in 2014. More than 600 chemical peaks were identified satisfying the identification criteria in air and water samples, respectively, providing a list for further investigation. Chemical substances with reported national emission rates in 2014 (n = 149) were also screened for potential existence in the environment using a level II fugacity model. Most of chemical substances classified as not detectable were not identified with detection frequency greater than 20% by nontarget screening, indicating that a simple equilibrium model has a strong potential to be used to exclude chemicals that are not likely to remain in the environment after emissions from targeted monitoring. (C) 2017 The Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V.