A New Concept for Regulatory Water Monitoring Via High-Performance Liquid Chromatography Coupled to High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry

A combined approach of target, suspected target and non-target screening using liquid chromatography –high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC–HRMS) was used to develop a new concept for water monitoring. With the current LC–MS/MS target approach for water monitoring, all targets can be quantified, but no additional information about the sample is collected. With the new concept, it is possible to detect 97% of the target compounds with a simplified quantification method without losing accuracy. Furthermore, a suspect target screening can be performed to get broader qualitative information about the water samples. In addition, the non-target screening offers the possibility to identify unknown micropollutants. All three evaluation steps depend on the same analytical measurement so that a lot of measurement and quality assurance effort can be saved. This concept could change water monitoring and assessment, and make it much more efficiently without losing information. There is a chance to measure less but learn more about the water bodies.