Environmental: Emerging Contaminants

This Tuesday afternoon session will discuss mass spectrometry analysis of emerging environmental contaminants found in fish, wastewater effluent, arctic snow, drinking water, and other matrices. It will be chaired by Eunha Hoh of San Diego State University and will be held in Ballroom 6A from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Jonathan Mosley of US EPA in Athens, Georgia will lead off this session with a talk titled “High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry of Skin Mucus for Monitoring Physiological Impacts and Biotransformation Products in Fish Exposed to Wastewater Effluent.” His talk will discuss an MS-based untargeted metabolomics approach that led to the discovery of contaminant biotransformation products on the skin of exposed fish.

Next, Hailemariam Assress of the University of South Africa (Johannesburg) will present a talk titled “Retrospective Suspect and Non-Target Screening of Emerging Pollutants and Transformation Products in Wastewater Effluent Using UHPLC-QTOF-MS/MS.” This presentation will describe a screening approach for pollutants in wastewater effluent previously generated for target analysis without the need for reinjection of water samples.

Judy Westrick of Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) will then present a talk titled “Using Mass Spectrometry to Vet Cyanotoxin Concentrations by Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA).” In this study, targeted and untargeted workflows for microcystin MS were used to evaluate the ELISA method.

The next presentation, titled “Organic Pollutants in the Snow of Russian Arctic Islands: 2016-2017 Expeditions,” will be given by Dmitrii Mazur of Moscow State University (Moscow, Russia). Mazur’s presentation will discuss the non-targeted analysis of semivolatile organic compounds in snow samples from the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.

Hannah Liberatore of the University of South Carolina will present the next talk, “Energy Extraction and Utilization Impacts on Drinking Water Disinfection By-Product Formation and Toxicity.” She will describe an investigation of disinfection by-products from bromide, iodide, and organic precursors contributed by hydraulic fracturing and coal-fired power plant wastewaters during drinking water disinfection.

The final presentation in the session will be given by Amy McKenna of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, and is titled “Targeted Analysis of Oxygen Transformation Products Derived from Weathered Oil by FT-ICR MS.” Her talk will discuss a comparison of heavily weathered oil residues that highlights the molecular signature of oxygenated transformation compounds of different chemical functionalities.