Development of techniques for analysis of polar water-borne contaminants

淡水是我们可支配的最重要的自然资源之一，确保其质量是一项重大挑战。虽然通过控制有毒化学品的排放在改善环境质量方面取得了很大进展，但人们发现，我们的水资源被掺假的情况仍在继续，而且可能还在恶化。污染源很广，污染物来自工业废水、生活废水(被排泄的药品和病原体消毒的副产品污染)、农业和城市径流以及大气排放。污染物本身是相当多样的，包括有毒金属、无机阴离子、有机卤素、大量和各种极性有机化合物等。对于化学分析来说，极性分析物是一个特别的挑战，因为它们通常不适合用通常的方法进行分析。需要开发灵敏的方法来检测和量化这些水基化合物，同时提供一种快速筛选大量样品的手段，以帮助减少有毒化合物对地表水的输入。

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.