Nontargeted screening of the exposome using mass spectrometry and computational chemistry

Abstract: The exposome represents all environmental exposures to a human or organism during a lifetime [1]. The concept was developed to underline the important relationship between environment and health. Nontargeted screening (NTS) is an innovative approach involving high resolution mass spectrometry experiments aimed at identifying environmentally significant chemicals without prior knowledge of their structure [2].  Currently, large swaths of the exposome remain unknown: few of the c. 100,000 commercial substances have been investigated for their environmental and health impacts. This presentation will summarize our group’s recent progress on the development and application of novel strategies to identify unknown pollutants, including perfluoroalkyl substances, neurotoxic organophosphate esters, highly complex mixtures of halogenated flame retardants, and plastics.

References
[1] C.P. Wild, Int. J. Epidemiol., 41 (2012) 24
[2] R.A. Hites, K. Jobst, ES&T 52 (2018) 11975-11976.