1 research outputs found
The Power of Hyphenated Chromatography/Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry in Public Health Laboratories
Laboratories devoted to the public health field have
to face the
analysis of a large number of organic contaminants/residues in many
different types of samples. Analytical techniques applied in this
field are normally focused on quantification of a limited number of
analytes. At present, most of these techniques are based on gas chromatography
(GC) or liquid chromatography (LC) coupled to tandem mass spectrometry
(MS/MS). Using these techniques only analyte-specific information
is acquired, and many other compounds that might be present in the
samples would be ignored. In this paper, we explore the potential
of time-of-flight (TOF) MS hyphenated to GC or LC to provide additional
information, highly useful in this field. Thus, all positives reported
by standard reference targeted LCāMS/MS methods were unequivocally
confirmed by LCāQTOF MS. Only 61% of positives reported by
targeted GCāMS/MS could be confirmed by GCāTOF MS, which
was due to its lower sensitivity as nonconfirmations corresponded
to analytes that were present at very low concentrations. In addition,
the use of TOF MS allowed searching for additional compounds in large-scope
screening methodologies. In this way, different contaminants/residues
not included in either LC or GC tandem MS analyses were detected.
This was the case of the insecticide thiacloprid, the plant growth
regulator paclobutrazol, the fungicide prochloraz, or the UV filter
benzophenone, among others. Finally, elucidation of unknowns was another
of the possibilities offered by TOF MS thanks to the accurate-mass
full-acquisition data available when using this technique