Development of techniques for analysis of polar water-borne contaminants

淡水是我们所拥有的最重要的自然资源之一，确保其质量是一项重大挑战。尽管通过控制有毒化学物质的排放在改善环境质量方面取得了很大进展，但人们发现，我们的水资源仍在继续掺假，而且可能还在恶化。污染源范围广泛，包括工业废水、生活废水（例如被排出的药品和病原体消毒副产品污染）、农业和城市径流以及大气沉降物。污染物本身种类繁多，包括有毒金属、无机阴离子、有机卤素、种类繁多的极性有机化合物等。极性分析物在化学分析方面是一个特别的挑战，因为它们通常不能用通常的方法进行分析。需要开发敏感的方法来检测和量化这些水性化合物，同时提供快速筛选大量样品的手段，以帮助减少有毒化合物进入地表水。在这项工作中，中心主题将是利用毛细管电泳系统和基质辅助激光解吸电离质谱仪这两种仪器，开发快速灵敏的极性水性污染物分析方法。虽然我们的工作明确侧重于环境污染物，但为药物分析开发的方法可以在法医学，临床分析和制药工业中找到应用。此外，我们的方法将推进“绿色”分析方法，消耗和产生更低水平的有害溶剂，同时保持敏感和稳健分析的标准。

Fresh water represents one of the most important natural resources we have at our disposal and ensuring its quality is a major challenge. Although great strides have been made to improve the quality of the environment through controls on emissions of toxic chemicals, it has been found that adulteration of our water resources is continuing and, likely, worsening. The sources of contamination are wide-ranging, with inputs from industrial effluent, domestic wastewater (contaminated with, for example, excreted pharmaceuticals and byproducts of disinfection for pathogens), agricultural and urban run-off, and atmospheric fall-out. The contaminants themselves are quite diverse, including toxic metals, inorganic anions, organohalogens, numerous and varied polar organic compounds, etc. The polar analytes are a particular challenge with respect to chemical analysis as they are not typically amenable to analysis by the usual approaches. Development of sensitive methods to detect and quantify these water-borne compounds while providing a means for rapid screening of numerous samples is required to help mitigate input of toxic compounds to surface water.In this work, the central theme will be the development of fast and sensitive methods for analysis of polar water-borne contaminants using two instruments: a capillary electrophoresis system and a matrix assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometer. Although our work explicitly focuses on environmental contaminants, the methods developed for the analysis of pharmaceuticals could find application in forensics, clinical analysis and the pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, our approach will advance "green" analytical methods that consume and generate lower levels of hazardous solvent, while maintaining standards for sensitive and robust analyses.