Could 3M have measured PFOS in non-occupationally exposed human sera before 1997?

Absolutely yes.

I did it in 1997 and it was easy. The liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LCMS) method my team and I developed in 1997 was built using well-established analytical techniques and commercially-available analytical tools that are routinely combined.  Since I worked for 3M, I had a ready supply of 3M-produced PFOS so I could optimize my analytical parameters for that compound.

The method my team used to prepare the blood samples for analysis was inspired by a method published in the peer-reviewed literature in 1985 [LINK].  3M’s Environmental Lab scientists modified the method and adapted it to fit electrospray LCMS instrumentation present in their lab in the early/mid 1990s [LINK]. I made further modifications to that method in 1997 and again in 1998.  The modifications I made were designed to improve the sensitivity of the method via standard analytical strategies, not cutting-edge technology (like my 3M predecessors, I was also using electrospray LCMS). Following revisions to the manuscript by 3M executives, the method my team and I developed was published in 2000 [LINK]. 

  
Our success in developing this method was not due to “state of the art”  technology or analytical “innovation.” [#1587] Our success was primarily due to the fact that we had access to information on and a standard of PFOS, a PFAS compound produced in the US solely by 3M during that time period.  Developing the method was not difficult.  The biggest challenges for me in 1997 and 1998 were obstacles and head winds from 3M management - not about the method, but about the data we collected using it.  

So, yes, 3M could have developed an LCMS method capable of measuring PFOS in non-occupationally exposed human sera well before 1997. It wasn’t more technology the company needed, it was simply the will to do the work.

As an analytical chemist, I believe 3M possessed sufficient technical capability to determine that PFOS was widely present in the blood of the general population in the mid-1970s. My technical assessment is validated by a conversation I had in 1998 with a 3M chemist who made that determination starting in 1975 [#2534].  Laying out that history is a much longer analysis that I will save for another post.

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