Analysis of 8 polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) in environmental matrices by GC-MS/MS

PCBs are resistant to decomposition in the environment, and tend to accumulate in living organisms. As a result, they are designated as POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutants). In monitoring these environmental pollutants in river water and sludge, sensitivity for the detection of trace quantities and separation from impurities in the samples become important issues. This application demonstrates the analysis of 8 different PCB over a broad calibration range (0.1 μg/L to 200 μg/L). Instrument calibration was done using an internal standard approach. 8 levels between 0.1 μg/L and 200 μg/L have been measured for calibration and resulted in R2-value above 0.9995 for all compounds. Figure 2 shows the acquired calibration curves. Stability evaluation of the calibration was done using the internal standard (ISTD) stability. Each sample contained identical amount of ISTD spiked at the end of sample preparation. Figure 4 shows the very good stability of ISTD over the whole sequence. Excellent sensitivity combined with a high linear dynamic range was shown for standards and real world samples in PCB analysis using GCMSMS. Excellent sensitivity combined with a high linear dynamic range was shown for standards and real world samples in PCB analysis using GCMSMS.