Determination of Pentachlorophenol in Papers for Cigarette Product by LC-MS/MS Method

A method based on high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was developed for determining the pentachlorophenol in cigarette papers. The sample of paper was ultrasonically extracted, the extract was directly injected into and separated on an Atiantis d C₁₈ column by using methanol-water (containing 0.1% formic acid) as mobile phase. The pentachlorophenol was detected by LC-MS/MS under multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode and quantified by internal standard method. The results showed that: 1) The linear range and quantification limit of this method were 1-20 ng/mL and 0.018 mg/kg, respectively. The linear relation was good (R²>0.99). The average recoveries were more than 91.6% with the relative standard deviations less than 8%. 2) This method was suitable for the fast analysis of pentachlorophenol in papers for cigarette product with the advantages of simple pretreatment and free of complex derivation steps.