AS119: A Fully Automated Approach to the Analysis of NDMA in Water

Martin Perkins

2nd August 2018

AS119 – A Fully Automated Approach to the Analysis of NDMA in Water

N-Nitrosodimethylamine, or NDMA, can be formed during the treatment of drinking-water.

Concentrations of NDMA in drinking-water have been measured up to 40 ng/litre, although lower concentrations are more common. NDMA is carcinogenic, and has been linked to the induction of tumours so its accurate detection is of critical importance.

This Application Note presents a fully automated NDMA water analysis for improved accuracy and efficiency.NDMA is a very polar molecule and is difficult to extract from water on most SPE phases. However, we show how the extraction of NDMA from water samples (SPE) can be fully automated to enrich NDMA from water samples using ITSP cartridges. The injection of the NDMA extracts onto a GC/MS is also automated.

The detection limit obtained on the single quadrupole instrument is approximately 0.1 ng/ml. And for real sample analysis, a 7000 GC/MS/MS from Agilent operated in Multiple Reaction Monitoring mode was used in conjunction with ITSP to offer much lower detection limits for NDMA.

Offering more specificity, the method resulted in much cleaner chromatograms with little or no interfering peaks.

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