For more than 40 years, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has monitored semivolatile organic compounds (SVOC) in wastes, soils/sediments, and groundwater via its Method 8270. This method is extensive in scope, targeting chemicals found in petroleum/soot (e.g., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), plastics (e.g., phthalates), antiseptics (e.g., phenols, halobenzenes), and many other sources. Similarly extensive is the list of QC criteria for successful method performance. These criteria include one-time performance checks (e.g., initial calibration verification), 12-hour periodical performance checks (e.g., DTFPP tuning, benzidine tailing factor, DDT degradation) and batch-wise performance checks (e.g., method blank, matrix spike & duplicate, laboratory control spike). Having undergone several revisions, EPA Method 8270 Version E (8270E) was released in 2018, introducing several important changes to the protocol.
This application note reports results from the analysis of SVOC according to the requirements of EPA Method 8270 performed with the PerkinElmer GCMS 2400™ System. The analysis demonstrates improvement upon the official method, showing faster analysis time with acceptable resolution as required by high throughput laboratories.