Rapid Quantification of Perfluorinated Compounds in Drinking and Surface Water Using LC-MS/MS

Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) are synthetic molecules with carbon chains to which fluorine is bound by high strength carbon-fluorine covalent bonds. Useful due to their surfactant and hydrophobic physicochemical properties these materials are used broadly since the 1950s in industrial applications such as the conveyance of stain and stick resistance to a wide variety of materials and products including clothing, cookware, carpet, and food containers. These molecules, now classified as persistent organic pollutants, are highly stable and resistant to biological degradation, therefore they persist in the environment, bio-accumulate, and due to their ready transport by water are found even in remote regions of Earth. As contaminants of emerging concern, research on PFCs is ongoing to determine the impacts of these materials on human health and the environment. A CDC study detected four of these analytes in >98% of serum samples representative of the general US population above age twelve. Low level analysis of these compounds is challenging due to their ubiquitous presence in the laboratory and analytical instrumentation components.