Transformation products of emerging contaminants in the environment and high-resolution mass spectrometry: a new horizon.

It is crucial to study the presence of transformation products (TPs) of emerging contaminants that can be potentially found in the environment after biological or chemical degradation. This review focuses on the potential and shortcomings of high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) to identify these TPs, with emphasis on recent developments in mass analyzers, data evaluation, and compound identification workflows and applications. Advances in HRMS technologies, including direct introduction or in-line chromatographic separation modes, ionization techniques, mass analyzers, and detection methods, have led to powerful tools to assess the molecular changes and the opening of new horizons to identify unknown molecules. Advances in HRMS pertaining to the generation of analytical data for the main methods to identify TPs, including nontargeted and targeted approaches as they are applied to elucidate the structure of TPs, are also discussed.