Application of tandem mass spectrometry combined with gas chromatography to the routine analysis of ethyl carbamate in stone-fruit spirits

Gas chromatography (GC) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) operated in selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode is currently the method of choice for the determination of the toxic contaminant ethyl carbamate in alcoholic beverages. However, even after extensive sample cleanup over diatomaceous earth columns, the identity of ethyl carbamate often cannot be ascertained with confidence, due to inconsistent ratios of the SIM ions m/z 62, 74 and 44 because the qualifier ions are highly susceptible to interferences. Therefore, a new method combining GC and tandem MS using a triple-quadrupole instrument is introduced to determine ethyl carbamate in stone-fruit spirits. For quantitative analysis the characteristic transitions of m/z 74 --> 44 and m/z 62 --> 44 for ethyl carbamate as well as m/z 64 --> 44 for the deuterated internal standard ethyl carbamate-d5 were monitored in the multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. In the validation studies, ethyl carbamate exhibited good linearity with a regression coefficient of 1.000. The limits of detection and quantitation were 0.01 and 0.04 mg/L. The recovery of the method was 100.4 +/- 9.4%. The precision never exceeded 7.8% (intraday) and 10.1% (interday) and the trueness never exceeded 11.3% (intraday) and 12.2% (interday) at any of the concentrations examined, indicating good assay accuracy. A good agreement of analytical results between a previously developed GC/MS SIM method and the GC/MS/MS MRM procedure was found (R=0.987). Regarding the validation data, the procedure is sensitive, selective and reproducible. The applicability of the developed method was demonstrated by the investigation of 70 stone-fruit spirits from commercial trade. The ethyl carbamate concentration of the samples ranged between 0.07 and 7.70 mg/L (mean 1.21 mg/L). The main advantage of the developed GC/MS/MS method is the reliability of the results without the need for time-consuming confirmatory analyses.