Jon Benskin

I am an environmental analytical chemist studying occurrence, fate, and behaviour of emerging polar contaminants. Major research themes in my group are:

High resolution mass spectrometry-based non-target and suspect screening

We develop new analytical methods using state-of-the-art instrumentation to detect and identify novel chemical entities. Through collaboration with researchers at the Swedish Museum of Natural history, the Swedish Food Agency, and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, we can apply these methods to a wide range of samples, including human biofluids, wildlife tissues, and municipal wastewater treatment plant sludge. Recent highlights include non-target time trend screening in human blood, and single zebrafish embryo metabolomics.

Fluorine mass balance experiments

Over 4500 Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are known to exist yet only a small fraction (~20-50) are routinely measured, leading to concerns that PFAS exposure may be underestimated. To address this problem, we combine targeted analyses with combustion ion chromatography (CIC)-based total fluorine determination in a so-called “fluorine mass balance” approach. Samples with large quantities of unidentified organofluorine can be prioritized for characterization using high resolution-based suspect/non-target screening. Applications of this technique include human serum and wildlife tissues, wastewater treatment plant sludge, groundwater, and consumer products (cosmetics, food packaging, textiles, etc). Among our most recent discoveries is the occurrence of a large quantity of unidentified organofluorine in the blubber of marine mammals, which we are currently working to identify.

Contaminant fate, behaviour, time trends

We apply novel analytical tools to study contaminant fate, behaviour, and time trends in the environment. Examples include the uptake of PFAS in vegetables and fungi, biotransformation of contaminants in sediments, and PFAS temporal trends in human serum, milk, and wildlife tissues.