Simultaneous selective detection of organophosphate and phthalate esters using gas chromatography with positive ion chemical ionization tandem mass spectrometry and its application to indoor air and dust

A selective and sensitive method for the simultaneous determination of 14 organophosphate and six phthalate esters using gas chromatography (GC) and mass spectrometry (MS) is presented. Both of these compound classes are frequently found in the indoor environment due to their use as bulk additives in numerous polymers, consumer products and building materials. GC/MS utilizing positive ion chemical ionisation (PICI) in selected reaction monitoring (SRM) mode with isobutane as the reagent gas was found to be the best of the tested methods; it proved superior to electron ionisation (EI) in selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode and to PICI using methane as the reagent gas. The method was applied to indoor air samples collected by active air sampling using solid‐phase extraction (SPE) cartridges. Organophosphates and phthalates were simultaneously determined with method detection limits (MDLs) in the range of 0.1–47 ng m^?3. For most compounds the MDLs were ≤0.2 ng m^?3, but due to the presence of some of these ubiquitous indoor air pollutants in the blanks, significantly higher MDLs were observed for a few compounds. Finally, the method was also applied in the screening of a much more complex sample matrix, indoor dust. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.