Validation and standardization of SPE and HPLC-UV methods for simultaneous determination of legacy and insensitive munitions

Overview of microscale analytical methods for the quantitative detection of bioaccumulative contaminants in small tissue masses

“…A clear example is the analysis of explosives residues using USEPA method 8330A (USEPA 2007c), for which the original methodology was developed by researchers at ERDC's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) and then further modified to include multi-increment composite sampling (USEPA method 8330B) (USEPA 2006). Most recently, ERDC Environmental Laboratory (EL) researchers have added insensitive munitions to the analyte list and are working with USEPA to include this process as an addendum to Method 8330B (Scircle et al 2023;Crouch et al 2020;Russell et al 2014). This research and subsequent administrative tasks are executed over the course of many years, often approaching a decade, with associated costs of several million dollars.…”

“…To address the limited analytical procedures for microscale analytical procedures, the same level of effort should be put forward as previously discussed for explosives and insensitive munitions analytical procedures. Robust, adequately funded, and time allotted research projects (e.g., $500,000/year for 5 years) should be initiated to specifically develop and validate analytical methods for all target classes of compounds (e.g., PCBs, pesticides, and metals) of interest to the USACE Civil Works program via round robin studies modeled after those recently performed for insensitive munitions constituents (Crouch et al 2020;Scircle et al 2023). The transition of new and validated methods to USEPA (Lotufo et al 2022) and other stakeholders would immediately provide acceptance by the larger scientific and regulatory communities and further demonstrate ERDC's leadership in this area.…”