Scientometric review: Concentration and toxicity assessment in environmental non-targeted LC/HRMS analysis

Abstract

Non-targeted screening with LC/HRMS is a go-to approach to discover relevant contaminants in environmental water samples that contain an abundance of chemicals. The rapidly increasing popularity of non-targeted LC/HRMS screening has initiated development of a diverse set of methods for assessing the concentration and toxicity of the detected chemicals. This review aims to benchmark the trends in the environmental NTS literature with particular focus on (1) methods used for the quantification of tentatively identified chemicals that lack analytical standards, (2) methods for assessing the toxicity of detected chemicals, and (3) methods combining the former into a risk evaluation. Here we provide a scientometric review of these strategies based on the Web of Science referenced papers published between 2019 and 2022. General trends show that quantification and toxicity assessments are widely employed in NTS, reaching 66 % and 45 % over four years, respectively. Simultaneously, only 13 % of the papers covered here combine these results into a risk factor or similar. With this review we aim to highlight the advantages and gaps in the approaches used for concentration and toxicity assessment and provide guidelines for more homogeneous data interrogation and extrapolation.