Credit: Tobias Hulleman et al.
Researchers from the Universities of Amsterdam and Queensland have reported that less than 2% of all chemicals around us have been identified. While this could mean human exposure is low, researchers believe that this shortcoming may be caused by biases in sample preparation or analysis.
Non-targeted analysis, or NTA, aims to identify all of the chemicals around us. Despite extensive research recently, in the study published in Environmental Science and Technology, researchers believe these efforts have identified less than 2% of chemicals. The researchers believe that this underscores the necessity for urgency in chemical monitoring. "We need to incorporate more data-driven strategies into our studies to be able to effectively protect the human and environmental health," said Viktoriia Turkina a Ph.D. student at UvA's Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences.
The concept of NTA analysis began 15 to 20 years ago and was introduced to look at chemical exposure in a non-biased manner. By taking samples from the environment and analyzing them using chromatography and mass spectrometry, researchers aimed to identify all of the chemicals in a given space. However, these samples certainly contain chemicals that have not yet been identified. With theorized numbers as high as 1060 compounds possible, and only around 180 million organic and inorganic substances described in the literature the task is daunting.
During the meta-analysis of 57 NTA publications, researchers discovered that less than 2% of the chemical space was covered. While this could mean exposure is low, they also noted shortcomings in sample preparation and analysis of many samples.
"In general," said Dr. Saer Samanipour, "the chemical analysis community is to a great extent driven by the available technology that vendors have developed for specific analysis purposes. Thus the instrumental set-up and data processing methods are rather limited when it comes to non-targeted analysis."
Samanipour does believe that NTA is worth pursuing, "But we need to develop it further and push it forward. Together with vendors we can develop new powerful and more versatile analytical technologies, as well as effective data analysis protocols."