Customer Case: Envirolab Services, Sydney, Australia
Being one of the earliest adopters of the ISOLUTE® PLD+ for PFAS sample preparation consumables for fast, effective clean-up of PFAS analytes in biological fluids which is an emerging area within PFAS testing, we spoke with the team at Envirolab Services in Sydney, Australia, Phalak Inthakesone (Group Organics Manager) and Joshua Williams (Senior Research and Development Chemist) about their work and their thoughts on this novel approach.
The Envirolab Group has testing capabilities covering soil, water, air and occupational hygiene samples for a range of organics, inorganics, microbiological, and forensic toxicology, and the lab often works with emerging contaminants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances. (PFAS), Illicit drug residues including methamphetamine and various other environmental residues and contaminants as required by their clients.
In Australia, there’s growing concern about PFAS exposure and contamination in the environment due to the historical widespread use of consumer and industrial products containing PFAS.
With government investigations underway into the potential health effects of long-term PFAS exposure, we expanded our services beyond environmental testing to include the analysis of PFAS in biological fluids, such as blood and serum for human health
assessment.
The analytes we target depend on client requirements and specific project goals. Typically, we test for a total of 42 analytes, Perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids
including PFOA, Perfluoroalkyl Sulfonic Acids including PFOS, PFHxS and PFBS, fluorotelomer sulfonic acids including 6:2 FTS, amides and many more. More information on the analyte panels can be found on our website.
We initially used weak anion exchange (WAX) solid phase extraction for sample preparation, but the process was time-consuming taking several hours including conditioning and equilibration of the cartridges, wash steps, and sample concentration.
We then tried Biotage’s ISOLUTE® PLD+ for PFAS and it allowed us to get fast and effective clean-up for PFAS analytes in biological fluids. The simplified crash-and- filter approach reduced our preparation time by 65% as no conditioning or wash steps are required, and the time-consuming evaporation step is eliminated.
When comparing the two methods, ISOLUTE® PLD+ for PFAS effectively removed proteins and phospholipids, leading to cleaner extracts with higher recoveries and excellent reproducibility. For example, when using WAX, we had a reduced recovery of 20-40% for a number of the neutral charged groups such as the sulfonamido structures, a problem that was solved with ISOLUTE® PLD+ for PFAS. Additionally, our detection limit of 1
ppb for PFBS, PFHxS, PFOS and PFOA in blood/serum was achieved without concentrating the samples which simplified our workflow and led to significant time gains.
Although there are no regulations on PFAS levels in humans, growing concern over PFAS exposure, combined with the increasing focus on environmental testing, has led to rising interest in human testing. For instance, incidents such as elevated levels of PFAS contamination in drinking water at the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia, have highlighted the potential for human testing. Firefighting departments, with historical use of PFAS chemicals in their protective gear and foam, have their personnel tested regularly for PFAS exposure. So hopefully, we will see regulations being developed in the future.
Literature Number: PPS771