VERIFICATION OF THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS CONVENTION - MASS-SPECTROMETRY OF ALKYL METHYLPHOSPHONOFLUORIDATES

Under the provisions of the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), certain parts of chemical industry will be monitored to verify compliance with the Convention. This will include analysis of samples from industrial sites to check for the presence or absence of chemica l warfare related compounds. One of the problems in screening the chem icals to be monitored under the CWC is that certain classes of chemica l warfare agents are represented as families of chemicals, with many o f the individual chemicals having no analytical data available. One ex ample is the alkyl methylphosphonofluoridate family with an alkyl este r substituent from CH3 to C10H21. In this work, the mass spectra of 60 alkyl methylphosphonofluoridate family members have been studied to e nable the development of rapid on-site screening methods for this fami ly of chemicals.