The number of pollutants and chemicals with the potential to reach the environment is still largely unknown, which poses great challenges for researchers in various fields of science, environmental scientists, and analytical chemists. Chromatographic techniques, both gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) coupled with different types of detection, are now invaluable tools for the identification of a wide range of chemical compounds and contaminants in water. This review is devoted to chromatographic techniques GC-MS, GC-Orbitrap-MS, GC-MS/MS, GC-HRMS, GC × GC-TOFMS, GC-ECD, LC-MS/MS, HPLC-UV, HPLC-PDA, UPLC-QTOFMS, used to determinate emerging organic contaminants in aquatic media, mainly in urban water, published in the scientific literature over the past several years. The article also focuses on sample preparation methods used in the analysis of aqueous samples. Most research focuses on minimizing the number of sample preparation steps, reducing the amount of solvents used, the speed of analysis, and the ability to apply it to a wide range of analytes in a sample. This is extremely important in the application of sensitive and selective methods to monitor the status of urban water quality and assess its impact on human health.
Keywords: Chromatographic techniques; organic pollution; urban water pollution.