Determination of chloramphenicol residues in fish meats by liquid chromatography-atmospheric pressure photoionization mass spectrometry.

A liquid chromatography-atmospheric pressure photoionization (APPI) mass spectrometry method was developed for the determination of chloramphenicol (CAP) in fish meats (young yellowtail and flatfish). For the optimization of APPI, several APPI ion source parameters and mobile phases were investigated. CAP with APPI using the optimized parameters gave simple mass spectra and a strong signal corresponding to [M-H]- was observed. Further, APPI was compared with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) and APPI gave similar results in terms of structural information and a better signal-to-noise ratio. The samples were extracted with acetonitrile and evaporated to dryness followed by a clean-up step using the liquid-liquid distribution between acetonitrile and n-hexane. The mean recoveries of chloramphenicol from a young yellowtail meat and a flatfish meat spiked at 0.1-2 ng/g were 89.3-102.5 and 87.4-94.8%, respectively. The limit of detection (signal-to-noise ratio = 3) of the young yellowtail meat and the flatfish meat were 0.1 and 0.27 ng/g.