Confirmatory determination of organochlorine pesticides in surface waters using LC/APCI/tandem mass spectrometry open diamond.

A confirmatory method for the determination of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and their metabolites (endrin, alpha-endosulfan, beta-endosulfan, endosulfan sulfate, heptachlor, heptachlor epoxide, 2,4'-DDD, 4,4'-DDD, 2,4'-DDE 4,4'-DDE, 2,4'-DDT, and 4,4'-DDT) in surface waters using liquid chromatography /APCI/tandem mass spectrometry has been developed. Chromatographic separation was carried out on a ChromSpher 5 Pesticide column using a gradient elution with mobile phase 1mM ammonium acetate-acetonitrile. Endrin, alpha-endosulfan, beta-endosulfan , endosulfan sulfate, heptachlor and heptachlor epoxide were determined in the negative ionization mode, while the rest compounds in positive ionization mode. For the identification of the analytes, two multireaction monitoring transitions were selected per compounds except for the heptachlor which selected ion monitoring was used. The linearity of the optimized method ranges after SPE concentration, from 0.009 to 30.60 microgL(-1) with correlation coefficients greater than 0.99. The method recovery values varied from 72 to 119 % for the different fortification levels . The developed method was successfully applied to determine OCPs and their metabolites in surface water samples collected near paddy fields in growing season of rice, at year 2005 in Pathumthani province, Thailand. Endosulfan sulfate was detected in five out of seven samples and three of them could be quantitated in the range of 0.31 to 0.50 microgL(-1).