Ricerc@Sapienza

Nowadays, likely tens to hundreds of thousands of anthropogenic chemicals are dispersed in the aquatic environment, and only a small fraction is regularly monitored. These chemicals belong to very diverse classes, and they are generally referred to as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). They are mainly pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), UV filters, UV stabilizers, pesticides, plasticizers, drugs of abuse, and other industrial chemicals. Moreover, CEC transformation products (TPs) are studied since they could be even more toxic than the parent compounds.
Besides PPCPs, pesticides, herbicides, etc., other important CECs are the perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs). PFASs are a group of man-made chemicals; their fluorinated alkyl chains confer persistence and water/grease-repellent properties. There are over 4000 known PFASs, and for most of which there is little to no information about their fate/transport, exposure, and toxicological effects.
The aim of this project is the development of an analytical platform for the identification of the main CECs, in particular PPCPs and PFASs, in surface water. Also, their potential TPs will be investigated.
The first step will be the optimization of a solid phase extraction (SPE) protocol for the target compounds, namely PPCPs, drugs of abuse, and PFASs, together with their metabolites and TPs. Different SPE sorbents will be compared in terms of global recovery efficiency.
For the determination of these CECs, liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) will be used. Indeed, this allows untargeted analysis, as required when the presence of certain compounds is only suspected or even unknown. Then, a customized workflow for data interpretation will be used to tentatively identify as many CECs as possible and their TPs in river water samples with an acceptable confidence level.