Characterization of Toxaphene by High Resolution Gas Chromatography Combined with High Resolution Mass Spectrometry and Tandem Mass Spectrometry

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We examined the use of high resolution gas chromatography-electron ionization high resolution mass spectrometry (HRGC/EI-HRMS) in determining the toxaphene homologue distribution. Operating parameters such as electron energy, trap current and source temperature were optimized in order to obtain the maximum signal of the [M–C]+ and [M–HCl]+• fragment ions of each homologue group. Internal interferences due to the fragment ions from the homologues with one and two additional chlorine atoms were eliminated using EI-HRMS at a resolving power of 10 000 or higher. Tandem mass spectrometry (EI-MS/MS) was used in the fragmentation studies. HRGC/EI-HRMS-selected ion monitoring (SIM) at a resolving power of 10 000 was used to determine the homologue distribution of a commercial toxaphene mixture. This technique gave detection limits of ppb level. The performance of HRGC/EI-HRMS-SIM was compared to HRGC/ECNI-MS using isobutane as a moderating gas.