Isolation and Identification of Electrophilic Mutagens Produced during Chlorine Disinfection

摘要

The chlorination of organic materials present in natural waters and in wastewaters generates many direct acting mutagenic and potentially carcinogenic products. The reaction of nucleophilic reagents with the unidentified mutagenic electrophiles present in disinfected water and with a number of known electrophilic compounds as a means of generating stable addition products that could aid in the isolation, chromatographic separation, and in the identification of the mutagens via mass spectrometry was investigated. Of the nucleophiles investigated for this purpose diethyldithiocarbamate proved to be the most suitable. It was found to react with most of the electrophiles, but the mass spectra of the resulting products while providing unique ions suitable for selective ion monitoring, were not suitable for structure determination. Nucleophilic functionalities bonded to solid supports were also investigated for the purpose of selectively isolating electrophilic mutagens from aqueous samples and while several were found that would remove the electrophiles, no suitable means of removing them from the supports was found.