Automated toxaphene quantitation by GC/MS

Toxaphene is a complex mixture of at least 600 hexa- to decachlorinated bor nanes and bornenes, which was used as an insecticide from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, Like PCBs and other environmentally persistent organochlo rine pesticides, toxaphene is ubiquitous in the environment. Toxaphene's co mplex composition makes its accurate quantitation difficult. We report here an automatic, gas chromatographic mass spectrometry method (using electron capture negative ionization) that is precise and fast. This method is impl emented by a small QBasic program that compares peak area ratios to the pre dicted chlorine isotopic ion ratios. This method decreases the time require d for analysis while maintaining precise quantitation, The method is verifi ed with standard and unknown samples contaminated with various amounts of o ther organochlorine pesticide interferents.