Mass Spectrometric Identification of Pollutants in the Environment: A Personal and Bibliometric Perspective.

The nontarget identification of unsuspected organic pollutants in the environment is a topic of current interest, but it is not a new idea. Our laboratory has been engaged in this work for 50 years, and thus, it is timely to ask if our nontarget identifications of pollutants have mattered? The tool used to answer this question is the citation chronologies of several sets of nontarget identification papers we have published. Our papers on polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (1800 citations since 1972) and on halogenated flame retardants in the Great Lakes (800 citations since 2005) have clearly led to further work on the environmental sources and fates of these compounds. On the other hand, our papers on trifluoromethyl chlorobenzene derivatives in the Niagara River (170 citations since 1982) and on several alkyl phenols in the Detroit River (90 citations since 1991) have not led to further work. The attention that our identifications of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and unusual flame retardants received was probably due to the known toxicity and environmental persistence of some of these compounds. On the other hand, our identifications of some compounds in the Niagara and Detroit Rivers may have been too site specific to attract much attention. We suggest that simply publishing lists of newly identified compounds in the environment, even if they have been well-characterized, is not necessarily enough. Readers need a reason to focus on a particular result; probably, the most significant reasons for such attention are a compound's toxicity and environmental persistence.