Advances in Methodology and Applications of Nontargeted Analysis in Environmental Monitoring
Natalia Quinete, Florida International University; Bowen Du, Southern California Coastal Water Research Project; Edward Furlong, U.S. Geological Survey; Benjamin Place, National Institute of Standards & Technology; Elin M. Ulrich, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Tarun Anumol, Agilent Technologies, Inc.
Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry – Special Edition
If you are interested in this topic, join us for the Nontarget Analysis for Environmental Risk Assessment SETAC Focused Topic Meeting, which will be held from 22–26 May in Durham, North Carolina, and online.
Diverse recalcitrant chemicals are produced and used in our daily life, which eventually end up accumulating in many environmental and biological compartments. Without prior knowledge of pollution sources and because of the limited availability of chemical standards, environmental monitoring efforts using targeted analysis are not comprehensive and will likely underestimate environmental and human exposure. Non-targeted analysis (NTA) approaches, often employing high-resolution, mass spectrometry-based methods coupled to a separation technique (such as liquid or gas chromatography), have been increasingly used for identification and prioritization of organic pollutants in a variety of environmental matrices, biological samples and consumer products. NTA allows for a broader and less biased look at chemicals present in samples by collecting comprehensive instrumental data and either screening against a large library or database of compounds of interest (suspect screening) or identifying previously unknown chemicals from mass spectrometry first principles (true non-targeted).
Chemical monitoring is essential for characterizing the sources, occurrence, transport and fate of contaminants in environmental and biological compartments to provide improved chemical risk assessment and management. The potential to apply NTA to solve problems in a range of domains (e.g., human and ecological health, food and medical device safety) is immense. An increasing number of publications describe advances in NTA methodology and new applications, data processing workflows, quality control, software and data reporting to produce accurate and reproducible identification of organic chemicals, which substantially contribute to better assessments of chemicals in the environment.
However, instrumental and data processing methods are nearly as varied as the research questions they address, which makes the comparison between different NTA studies often challenging. There still exists much variability in the terminology, methodology and quality control used in NTA studies. There is a need for NTA practitioners to:
- Harmonize or standardize approaches and reporting practices
- Improve determination, calculation and communication of performance metrics
- Share best practices, including QA/QC, within the NTA community
- Improve the transparency and reproducibility of peer-reviewed NTA studies
- Communicate with scientific stakeholders to hasten understanding the value and use of NTA results
Nevertheless, NTA research has resulted in important progress of NTA methodologies and groundbreaking applications to environmental monitoring efforts, bringing the field one step closer to broader application and acceptance of NTA in the scientific, industrial and regulatory communities.
If you’re interested in diving deeper into this topic, check out the Nontarget Analysis for Environmental Risk Assessment SETAC Focused Topic Meeting, which will be held from 22–26 May in Durham, North Carolina, and online. Also, be on lookout for NTA sessions at the SETAC North America 43rd Annual Meeting, which will be held from 13–17 November in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and online.
The ET&C Special Issue, Advances in Methodology and Applications of Non-Targeted Analysis in Environmental Monitoring, will bring new knowledge to the NTA community. Articles from this special issue are available online to read now.
Authors’ contact information: Natalia Soares Quinete, [email protected]