Target and suspect screening of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) in consumer products using ion mobility...

This study aims to investigate the distribution of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and their precursors in 55 consumer products, including 27 personal care products (PCPs) from 7 categories and 28 household products (HPs) from 6 categories and analyze the correlation between them, by measuring PFASs using target analysis with LC-MS/MS and suspect screening using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) combined with ion mobility separation (IMS). In most products, perfluorocarboxylic acid (PFCA) concentrations (0.036-25.2 ng/g) exceeded perfluorosulfonic acid concentrations (n.d.-0.566 ng/g). In PCPs, the median concentrations of 12 PFASs and two fluorinated precursors (0.053-139 ng/g) were significantly higher than in HPs (0.012-76.0 ng/g) (p < 0.05). Across all PCP and HP types, short-chain PFASs (PFCAs ≤ C7; PFSAs ≤ C6) (1.68-46.9 ng/g) were also significantly higher than long-chain PFASs (0.071-6.86 ng/g) (p < 0.05). Suspect screening identified a total of 9 candidate PFASs, including the four PFCA precursors, all of which were assigned a confidence level of 3 or higher. The observed positive correlation between precursors and PFCAs (p < 0.05) suggests that precursors may be converted into PFCAs, thereby increasing PFCA concentrations, although the specific transformation pathways require further investigation. This study provides insights into the distribution of PFAS and their precursors in consumer products and demonstrates that IMS-HRMS-based suspect screening can be useful for distinguishing false positives in PFAS identification.