Screening (environmental)

[1][2][3][5] As such, target screening is most useful when monitoring the presence of specific organic compounds—particularly for regulatory purposes—which requires higher selectivity and sensitivity.

When the number of detected compounds and associated metabolites needs to be maximized for discovering new or emerging environmental trends or biomarkers for disease, a more non-targeted approach has traditionally been used.

[4][5][6][7] However, the rapid improvement of mass spectrometers into more high-resolution forms, with increased sensitivity, has made suspect and non-target screening more attractive, either as stand-alone approaches or in conjunction with more targeted methods.

[3] The structure of the suspected compounds are then elucidated based on that information, ideally confirmed with authentic reference standards.

[10] Aside from being able to analyze for more compounds, an additional benefit of this approach is that retrospective analysis, even years later, is enabled without reanalyzing the sample.

In this case, since no information is known about the compounds contained in the sample, no reference standard can be used for comparison, at least initially, overall making non-target screening one of the most challenging approaches.