The US EPA announced on June 12, 2019, the opening of the public comment and review period for draft method “SW-846 Update VII, Phase 2 – Method 8327 for Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Using External Standard Calibration and Multiple Reaction Monitoring (MRM) Liquid Chromatography/Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC/MS/MS)” under Docket ID EPA-HQ-OLEM-2018-0846. Environmental Standards reviewed and commented on the draft method and the supporting method validation and statistical reports on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute, RETIA USA, LLC, a confidential client involved in chemical manufacturing and Environmental Standards. Draft Method 8327 was the first PFAS method developed by US EPA to address non-drinking water matrices. At the present time, US EPA Method 537.1 is the only approved method for PFAS analysis and is applicable to only drinking water samples.
Draft Method 8327 is a direct-injection technique with external standard calibration. Unfortunately, this approach to analysis of PFAS in non-drinking water sample matrices is hardly even used by the commercial laboratory marketplace. Environmental Standards’ comment report listed many problematic issues with draft Method 8327 including comments that touched on branched and linear isomer identification, lack of isotope dilution quantitation, vague method performance criteria and poor performance of the method for 11 of the 24 PFAS compounds. We feel that US EPA needs to step up its method development game given the urgent need for uniform and comparable PFAS methods to address the hysteria associated with this class of emerging contaminants.
If you are interested in reading Environmental Standards’ full report, it can be found on the public docket at https://www.regulations.gov/document?D=EPA-HQ-OLEM-2018-0846-0103. And, if you have PFAS concerns, please contact David Blye or Rock Vitale for expert assistance.
Gary Yakub
SENIOR QUALITY ASSURANCE CHEMIST
