Determination of three organotin pesticide residues in apples and cabbages by gas chromatography-electron impact/positive chemical ionization mass spectrometry

Abstract

A method for the simultaneous determination of fenbutatin oxide, triphenyltin and cyhexatin in apples and cabbages was developed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry coupled with two different ionization techniques, electron impact (EI) ionization and positive chemical ionization (PCI). At first, the samples were digested by hydrobromic acid, and extracted by acetone-hexane (1:2, v/v). The extracts were derivatized by sodium tetraethylborate as the derivatization reagent, and cleaned up by the Florisil SPE columns. Finally, the samples were analyzed by GC-EI/MS and GC-PCI/MS in selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode. The results showed that good linearities were obtained with correlation coefficients (r2) greater than 0.997 for fenbutatin oxide in the range of 75-500 μg/L in both foods, triphenyltin in the range of 50-1000 μg/L in cabbages and 50-500 μg/L in apples and cyhexatin in the range of 50-1000 μg/L in the two foods. The accuracy was checked at three spiked levels (50, 100 and 200 μg/kg) in cabbages and apples. The limits of detection (LODs, S/N=3) were 0.01-0.05 mg/kg (EI) and 0.01-0.02 mg/kg (PCI), and the limits of quantifications (LOQs, S/N=10) were 0.03-0.16 mg/kg (EI) and 0.02-0.06 mg/kg (PCI). The average recoveries ranged from 59.24%-97.36% (apples) and 50.54%-94.54% (cabbages) in the mode of EI, and the corresponding values were 65.38%-95.86% and 62.56%-90.44% in the mode of PCI. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) were all less than 6.9% (n=6). The PCI method can be used to improve the accuracy in comparing with the EI, in terms of good selectivity and high sensitivity.