Growing health concerns regarding Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and their prevalence in consumer goods and the environment indicates a critical need to perform existing and upcoming regulatory methods efficiently and reliably on commercially available instrumentation. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to update their Method 537.1 for analysis of PFAS in drinking water; however, EPA Method 533, a more inclusive method aimed at monitoring multiple short-chain PFAS that are difficult to measure by Method 537.1 is becoming more prevalent.
EPA Method 533 is utilized for the determination of selected PFAS in drinking water by isotope dilution anion exchange solid phase extraction (SPE) and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS). Other published methods, including provisional EPA Methods 8327 and 1633, may be utilized for analysis of PFAS in more diverse matrices and sample types. This application note will focus on the validation of EPA Method 533, as well as the development of an improved version of this methodology using the PerkinElmer QSight LX50 Ultra High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC) System coupled with the PerkinElmer QSight 210 Triple Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer. The results demonstrate that all the PFAS analytes listed in EPA Method 533 can be determined reliably by the QSight 210 LC/MS/MS System, with good recovery and precision at low limits of quantification (LLOQs).