The method employing a SPME Arrow allows for the quantitation of water samples down to 50 ng/L for most of
the described aldehydes with good precision. A previous publication applying traditional standard SPME fibers and GC/MS achieved sensitivities down to 120-340 ng/L in spiked samples for C1, C3-C5 (ref. 3).
Blank water samples as well as the samples of the higher aldehydes contain C2 (acetaldehyde) and other contaminants
in amounts high enough to hamper the analysis at levels below 50 ng/L.
The sensitivity of the method could be increased further by applying selected reaction monitoring (SIM).
The robustness of the PAL SPME Arrow allowed for the uninterrupted analysis of several hundred samples with one single SPME Arrow.