Read how the Erie County Public Health Laboratory addressed the challenges associated with quantitation of target disinfection by-products DBPs in drinking water per U.S. EPA Method 557 by adopting IC-MS/MS.
Ensuring safe drinking water—rapidly and cost-effectively
Clean drinking water is critically important to human health. Typically, both mechanical and chemical processes are needed to ensure drinking water quality; however, the by-products of chemical processes can include chlorinated to halogenated acids (HAAs) and bromate among others. Because excessive consumption of these compounds can result in severe health issues, drinking water regulations require determination of the concentrations of disinfection by-products (DBPs) prior to release to the public.
Depending on the analytical method chosen, analysis and quantitation of DBPs can pose several challenges including time-consuming and tedious sample preparation and poor recoveries. The Erie County Public Health Laboratory has addressed these challenges with the adoption of a direct-injection ion chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (IC–MS/MS) method that uses the Thermo Scientific™ Dionex™ ICS-5000 HPIC™ System coupled to the Thermo Scientific™ Quantiva™ triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (equivalent to the Thermo Scientific™ Dionex™ ICS-6000 HPIC™ system and Thermo Scientific™ TSQ Fortis™ triple quadrupole mass spectrometer). Quantitation of target DBPs in drinking water per U.S. EPA Method 557 is robust, reliable, reproducible, and requires no sample preparation, allowing significant time, hazardous waste, and cost savings. Most significantly, Erie County Public Health Laboratory has reduced HAA determination time from approximately four hours to about 45 min per sample.
Download the full case study and find out how changing from a GC-ECD to an IC–MS/MS method saved Erie County Public Health Laboratory substantial analyst time performing extractions.