Mass Spectrometry and Environmental Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

Ever since world awareness of the problems caused by anthropogenic pollutants on the environment, analytical chemists have been striving to develop methodologies to look for ever smaller quantities of new or emerging chemicals. One of the big challenges facing environmental analysts is the complexity and variability of matrices associated with varying sources of collected samples.

Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that consists of ionizing chemical compounds to generate charged molecules or molecule fragments and measuring their mass-to-charge ratios. MS is now in very common use in analytical laboratories for both qualitative and quantitative purposes. Its hyphenation to gas chromatography (GC) and later to liquid chromatography (LC) provided powerful tools for determination of organic pollutants in complex environmental matrices thanks to the increased resolution capabilities of chromatography and unprecedented selectivity and sensitivity of the MS.

Environmental analysis aims commonly to monitor and study levels of pollutants in the atmosphere, rivers, soils, and other specific settings. Nowadays, it seems clear to all in the environmental community that, without such development of the capabilities of GC-MS and LC-MS over the past sixty years, it would not be possible to detect and accurately determine many harmful compounds at levels that have never been thought possible.

For this special issue on Mass Spectrometry and Environmental Analysis, I’m eager to entertain papers on instrumental analysis involving mass spectrometer as a detector. These include GC-MS, LC-MS, ICP-MS and applications in environmental and biological studies.

Dr. Sayed M. Hassan
Guest Editor