Persistent and mobile water contaminants are rapidly developing into a focal point of environmental chemistry and chemical regulation. Their defining parameter that sets them apart from the majority of regularly monitored and regulated contaminants is their mobility in the aquatic environment, which is intrinsically tied to a high polarity. This high polarity, however, may have severe implications in the analytical process and thus the most polar of these mobile contaminants may not be covered by widely utilized trace-analytical methods, and thus, alternatives are required. In this review, we infer the physical and chemical properties of mobile water contaminants from a set of almost 1800 prioritized REACH chemicals and discuss the implications these substance properties may have on four integral steps of the analytical process: sampling and sample storage, sample pre-treatment, separation and detection. We discuss alternatives to widely utilized trace-analytical methods, examine their application range and limitations, highlight potential analytical techniques on the horizon and emphasize research areas we believe still offer the most room for further improvement. While we have a comprehensive set of analytical methods to cover a large portion of the known mobile chemicals, these methods are still only infrequently utilized.

Graphical abstract

持久性和流动性水污染物正在迅速发展为环境化学和化学法规的重点。它们与大多数定期监测和管制的污染物不同的决定性参数是它们在水生环境中的流动性，其固有地与高极性相关。但是，这种高极性可能会对分析过程产生严重影响，因此，这些流动性污染物中最极性的物质可能无法被广泛使用的痕量分析方法所覆盖，因此需要其他方法。在这篇综述中，我们从一组将近1800种优先REACH化学品中推论出了流动水污染物的物理和化学性质，并讨论了这些物质性质可能对分析过程的四个整体步骤产生的影响：采样和样品存储，样品预处理，分离和检测。我们讨论了广泛使用的痕量分析方法的替代方法，研究了它们的应用范围和局限性，重点介绍了潜在的分析技术，并强调了我们认为仍可提供最大改进空间的研究领域。尽管我们有一套全面的分析方法来涵盖大部分已知的移动化学品，但这些方法仍然很少使用。

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