Approaches to dioxin analysis by HRGC‐HRMS and hybrid HRGC‐MS‐MS

A hybrid mass spectrometer with an EBQQ configuration was used to investigate two approaches to trace dioxin analysis: high resolution gas chromatography – high resolution mass spectrometry (HRGC-HRMS) and high resolution gas chromatography – mass spectrometry – mass spectrometry (HRGC-MS-MS). It is shown that selected ion monitoring (SIM) HRGC-HRMS exhibits better selectivity for dioxins separated on a cyanopropyl column than is otherwise obtained under medium resolution mass spectrometry (3,000 resolution), while optimization of conditions for HRGC-MS-MS allowed the observation of 350 femtograms of the highly toxic 2,3,7,8-TCDF at a S/N ratio of 5:1. Both methods were applied to environmental samples with good results.