Rapid analysis of environmental contaminants

by fast GC–TOF MS with Select-eV variable-energy electron ionisation

Summary

This Application Note shows that BenchTOF time-of-flight mass spectrometers provide a robust, high-performance and highthroughput solution for screening multiple trace-level environmental contaminants. Revolutionary variable-energy electron ionisation is also shown to aid compound identification and enhance the selectivity and sensitivity of analyses by generating secondary (qualifying) mass spectra with reduced fragmentation and a stronger molecular ion signal.

Introduction

The introduction of recent legislation, such as the EU Environmental Liabilities Directive 2004/35/EC, has led to a demand amongst analysts for more precise and robust methods for the identification of pollutants in environmental matrices, such as soil, sediment and water. However, meeting this demand has proved extremely challenging, fundamentally because of the large and continually increasing number of toxic compounds that may need to be monitored in a singlec analysis.