Revisions to EPA Method 624 for Analysis of VOCs by GC/MS

Environmental contamination has been at the forefront of government policy and regulation since the US EPA was established in 1970. Over the years the US EPA has developed, published, and updated multiple methods for analysis of environmental pollutants, and single-quadrupole gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS) has long been the technique of choice for determination of volatile organic contaminants (VOCs). The GCMS instrumentation has evolved, with improvements in sensitivity, reliability, and user experience, but there haven't been any significant advancements in the overall methodology since the mid-1980s.
The US EPA is currently in the process of developing a revision to US EPA Method 624, which was first promulgated in 1984 and specified the use of packed columns as part of the protocol to collect data on the VOC pollutants.

This poster describes a GCMS purge-and-trap (P&T) method validation study conducted to evaluate operating conditions for the existing US EPA Method 624 VOC list, using updated technology and advanced GCMS instrumentation.