Determination of Heterocyclic Aromatic Amines (HAAs) in Urban Particulate Standard Reference Material and Wildfire-Influenced Particulate Matter by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS)

Abstract

Heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs) are carcinogenic and mutagenic compounds formed by the cooking of meat and combustion of biomass. There are relatively few data on HAAs in atmospheric particulate matter (PM). We developed an analytical method using high performance liquid chromatography – tandem mass spectrometry (tandem quadrupole, HPLC-MS/MS(QqQ)) to analyze PM samples for 12 HAAs. We applied this method to an urban air standard reference material and wildfire-impacted PM_2.5 from the 2018 wildfire season in Northern California. The PM sample matrix adversely impacted the MS/MS response, with high levels of ion suppression for sample masses >4 mg and higher ion suppression in wildfire-impacted particulate matter compared with the standard reference material. Despite detection limits at the low ng level, no HAAs were detected in the standard reference material, but β-carboline norharman (0.34 ng/m³) was detected in one wildfire sample.

Keywords:

• Atmospheric particulate matter
• heterocyclic aromatic amines
• wildfire
• high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS)

Acknowledgements

The authors also acknowledge Dai Thai and Ashley Whitmore for their contributions to earlier stages of the work and thank Roy Dixon for his facilitation of the particulate matter sampling. The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

Data from this study can be obtained by contacting the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by funds from the National Science Foundation (MRI: Acquisition of High-Performance Liquid Chromatograph Mass Spectrometer, Award 1726596) and CSUS CIMERA through Associated Students Incorporated at Sacramento State.