Achievements and future trends in the analysis of emerging organic contaminants in environmental samples by mass spectrometry and bioanalytical techniques

Several groups of organic compounds have emerged as particularly relevant as environmental pollutants. These compounds, including new brominated flame retardants, disinfection by-products, drugs of abuse and their metabolites, hormones and other endocrine disrupting compounds, nanomaterials, perfluoroalkyl substances, pharmaceuticals and siloxanes among others, constitute new risks for environmental and human health. In order to face up to these new risk challenges there is an increasing need to assess their occurrence and behaviour in the environment, as well as, that of their degradation products. Therefore, during recent years an important part of research has been focused on to the improvement of analytical schemes for complex matrices, in which the new tendencies in sample preparation (e.g. online clean up systems), the development of new materials and new mass spectrometry analysers have played an important role. This paper presents a general overview of new analytical trends and potentials in trace analysis of emerging pollutants in the environment, including chromatographic techniques coupled to mass spectrometry, and bio analytical approaches (biosensors).