Automated Analysis of Persistent Organic Pollutants in the Gas Phase by Laser Ionization Mass Spectrometry

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are toxic chemicals that adversely affect human health and the environment around the world. The detection and evaluation of small amounts of POPs require methods with both high precision and high chemical selectivity. Conventional methods involve a number of preparatory steps and time-consuming analysis and are not suitable for the abovementioned purposes. Hence, new automated analysis methods are required for on-line detection and rapid analysis of POPs. In this paper, mass spectrometry with resonance-enhanced multi-photon ionization (REMPI) is performed to obtain information about the automated analysis of POPs in the gas-phase with on-line detection. Dynamic trapping time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS) was performed with sufficient selectivity and sensitivity for rapid analysis of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the gas phase. Compared to normal trapping, the use of dynamic trapping enabled ion signal intensity to be increased by a factor of greater than 10. The detection limit at 1 min was