Analytical Methods for Volatile Methylsiloxanes Quantification: Current Trends and Challenges

Silicon materials are widespread in our daily life and in numerous industrial applications, and this started raising concerns in the scientific community a couple of decades ago regarding the potential negative effects these chemicals could have in the environment and human health. Naturally, analytical methodologies were required to assess their presence around us. In particular, volatile methylsiloxanes (VMSs) have been the focus of research in this field, and their presence has been determined in many environmental matrices. However, this extended presence tends to provoke problems of external contamination during sampling and analysis, as, for instance, personal care products or chromatograph parts have VMSs in their formulations. Also, the volatility of these compounds advises against a large number of sample handling steps. This chapter reviews the analytical choices for the analysis of VMSs in water, air, sediments, soil and sewage sludge reported so far in literature, giving an overview of the sampling and sample processing precautions and the strategies employed for the extraction/clean-up (or lack thereof) before the typical analysis by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry detection (GC-MS), which in some cases presented different injection options.