Standards Development

Scope

This document specifies a method for quantitative determination of various perfluorinated hydrocarbons by means of High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and mass spectrometry in soil, sludge, sediment and waste (see Table 1).

For many substances to which this document applies a limit of quantification (LOQ) of 0.1 to 10 g/kgdm can be achieved.

The method can be applied to the analysis of additional PFAS not specified in the scope, if validity is proven by proper in-house validation protocols. For each target compound both, eventually occurring branched, isomers and the respective nonbranched isomer are quantified together. In this method the amount of linear and branched PFAS is quantified using the response factor of the linear PFAS in the calibration standard and the total area of the linear and branched PFAS (Annex 1 gives more explanation)

Purpose

In recent years the awareness for contamination by a wide group of individual PFAS compounds in the environment has drastically increased. The contamination occurs in all environmental segments like water, air, soil, but also in waste. Until now a standardized procedure for testing solid matrices on the content of PFAS is missing. The attached document gives a proposal for a standard procedure, to be adopted as EN ISO standard, after further development by WG2 of CEN/TC444 “Test methods for environmental characterization of solid matrices” under Vienna Agreement under CEN-lead.