Growing health concerns regarding PFAS and their prevalence in consumer goods and the environment indicate a critical need to execute existing and upcoming regulatory methods simply and reliably on commercially available instrumentation. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established methods 537.1 and 533 for analysis of PFAS in drinking water. However, EPA Method 1633, still in draft at the time of publication of this application note, is a more inclusive method aimed at monitoring 40 PFAS target analytes in various sample matrices. Additionally, this method is for use in the Clean Water Act (CWA) for the determination of PFAS in aqueous, solid (soil, biosolids, sediment), and tissue samples by isotope dilution, anion exchange solid phase extraction (SPE), and liquid chromatography/ tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS).
Laboratories performing analysis in compliance with EPA 1633 have also to overcome some typical challenges posed by the complex matrices of samples containing PFAS. Contamination and matrix-induced contamination are two important aspects to consider when analyzing PFAS. This application note reports results on the verification of EPA Method 1633, as well as the development of an improved version of this methodology using the PerkinElmer LX50 UHPLC System coupled with the PerkinElmer QSight® 420 Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer that allows for reduced analysis time. This application notes also shares best practices for the mitigation of the matrix-induced contamination.