The benefits of high resolution mass spectrometry in environmental analysis

The benefits of high resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) are well known and widely realized in various applications; however, HRMS is very rarely utilized in environmental GC/MS analyses. It is assumed that low resolution GC/MS provides adequate and reliable results in the majority of cases dealing with priority pollutants and other volatile and semivolatile compounds. As environmental issues become more and more important in modern society and new generations of high resolution and high mass accuracy mass spectrometers become available, it is quite reasonable to expect improvements in sensitivity, reliability and quantity of information provided by GC/MS analyses. This article demonstrates the advantages of high resolution GC/MS for qualitative and quantitative environmental analyses including targeted and non-targeted approaches as well as de novo structural elucidation of analytes not present in commercial libraries. Most of the examples presented here involve the GC/MS analysis of snow samples collected in 2012 and 2013 in Moscow, Russia.