36. Accelerated LC/MS/MS for the Quantitation and Identification of Pesticides, Pharmaceuticals, and Personal Care Products in Environmental Samples

Poster: Tue 6:30-7:30PM

Andre Schreiber Applied Biosystems

André Schreiber1, Rolf Kern2, Nadia Pace3, Christopher Borton2, Tania Sasaki2 1 Applied Biosystems, Concord ON, Canada 2 Applied Biosystems, Foster City, CA 3 MDS Analytical Technologies, Concord ON, Canada

Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDC) and Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCP) are environmental contaminants of growing concern. In order to properly assess the effects of such compounds on our environment, especially their disruption of endocrine function in mammals and fish, it is necessary to accurately monitor their presence in the environment. The diversity of chemical properties of these compounds makes method development challenging. Presented in this work is a method which enables the quantitation of these compounds using Multiple Reaction Monitoring (MRM) and their identification using Enhanced Product Ion (EPI) scanning with mass spectral library searching using a hybrid triple quadrupole linear ion trap LC/MS/MS system (QTRAP® 5500). Automatic software tools were used to generate the library. Extracts of water samples were analyzed and analytical data, including quantitative and confirmatory results, were reported automatically. In a single experiment approximately 160 MRM transitions were monitored without cross talk using traditional MRM and Scheduled MRM™ algorithm. The use of Scheduled MRM™ greatly enhances accuracy and reproducibility of LC/MS/MS detection of a large set of targeted analytes at low concentration levels. Limits of Quantitation were found in the sub 10 nanogram per liter range (part per trillion). In the same experiment fast confirmatory Enhanced Product Ion (EPI) scans were triggered by intelligent software using Collision Energy Spread (CES) settings. In comparison to dedicated and fixed Collision Energies CES was found to give more reproducible and richer MS/MS spectra and thus greatly enhancing the quality of library searching. Library searchable EPI spectra were generated at low nanogram per liter concentrations.

Email: andre.schreiber@lifetech.com

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