Untargeted analysis of a composite house dust sample has been performed as part of a collaborative effort to evaluate the progress in the field of suspect and nontarget screening and build an extensive database of organic indoor environment contaminants. Twenty-one participants reported results that were curated by the organizers of the collaborative trial. In total, nearly 2350 compounds were identified (18%) or tentatively identified (25% at confidence level 2 and 58% at confidence level 3), making the collaborative trial a success. However, a relatively small share (37%) of all compounds were reported by more than one participant, which shows that there is plenty of room for improvement in the field of suspect and nontarget screening. An even a smaller share (5%) of the total number of compounds were detected using both liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Thus, the two MS techniques are highly complementary. Most of the compounds were detected using LC with electrospray ionization (ESI) MS and comprehensive 2D GC (GC×GC) with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) and electron ionization (EI), respectively. Collectively, the three techniques accounted for more than 75% of the reported compounds. Glycols, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and various biogenic compounds dominated among the compounds reported by LC-MS participants, while hydrocarbons, hydrocarbon derivatives, and chlorinated paraffins and chlorinated biphenyls were primarily reported by GC-MS participants. Plastics additives, flavor and fragrances, and personal care products were reported by both LC-MS and GC-MS participants. It was concluded that the use of multiple analytical techniques was required for a comprehensive characterization of house dust contaminants. Further, several recommendations are given for improved suspect and nontarget screening of house dust and other indoor environment samples, including the use of open-source data processing tools. One of the tools allowed provisional identification of almost 500 compounds that had not been reported by participants.

Department of Chemistry University of Athens 157 71 Athens Greece

Department of Environmental Science and Analytical Chemistry Stockholm University 106 91 Stockholm Sweden

Environment and Climate Change Canada North Vancouver V7H 1B1 Canada

Environment and Climate Change Canada Ottawa ON K1V 1C7 Canada

Environmental Institute 972 41 Kos Slovak Republic

INERIS Parc Technologique ALATA 60550 Verneuil en Halatte France

IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute 114 27 Stockholm Sweden

National Institute for Environmental Studies Tsukuba 305 8506 Japan

NILU Norwegian Institute for Air Research 2027 Kjeller Norway

Ontario Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Etobicoke ON M9P 3V6 Canada

Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences University of Queensland Woolloongabba QLD 4102 Australia

Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment 611 37 Brno Czech Republic

Research Institute for Pesticides and Water University Jaume 1 12071 Castelló Spain

Swedish Chemicals Agency 172 67 Sundbyberg Sweden

Technical University of Munich 85748 Garching Germany

Toxicological Center University of Antwerp 2610 Wilrijk Belgium

Umeå University 90187 Umeå Sweden

University of Bordeaux 33405 Talence Cedex France

University of California Davis CA 95616 USA

Vogon Laboratory Services Ltd Cochrane AB T4C 0A3 Canada

VU University Amsterdam 1081 HV Amsterdam The Netherlands

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The NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE): facilitating European and worldwide collaboration on suspect screening in high resolution mass spectrometry

An actionable annotation scoring framework for gas chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry

Inter-laboratory mass spectrometry dataset based on passive sampling of drinking water for non-target analysis