Abstract

Determination of explosives in environmental soil samples by gas chromatography ion trap mass spectrometry

Author(s): Amal Al-Rashdan, Murad I.H.Helaleh

A rapid, accurate and reproducible method was developed for quantitative determination of thirteen explosive compounds in soil at trace levels (µg/ kg) by gas chromatography-ion trap mass spectrometry. Explosives were extracted fromsoil by sonicationwith acetonitrile, followed by cleanup with silica cartridge and florisil. Two calibration curves were drawn and the correlation coefficients (r2) for each explosive were ranged from 0.995-0.999 and 0.984-1.000 for calibration curves 1 and 2, respectively. The method provided detection limits ranging from 0.98 g/g for nitrobenzene (NB) to 0.01 g/g for 3,5-DNA. Themethod was validated by different analysis. The method gave good recovery (60.49-97.65%), good precision (0.99-25.38%), excellent reproducibility, and proved to be suitable to real routine work sample analysis. The effectiveness of the method appeared by the analysis of soil samples in several soil samples from test fields in Kuwait.