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Inexpensive Screening for Smoked Drugs Using An Autosampler/DART/TOFMS
Citation:
GRANGE, A. H. Inexpensive Screening for Smoked Drugs Using An Autosampler/DART/TOFMS . Presented at American Society for Mass Spectrometry 58th Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, May 23 - 27, 2010.
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Presentation material
Description:
Introduction. In 2008 alone, 6783 clandestine, methamphetamine labs were tallied by the DEA. Smoked drug residues on surfaces pose serious health risks, especially to toddlers. NIOSH methods 9106, 9109 (GC/MS with derivitization), and 9111 (LC/MS) provide detection limits for wipe samples collected using cotton gauze pads of 0.05 - 0.1 μg/100 cm2. Fifteen states have detection-based, cleanup limits of 0.1 – 0.5 μg/100 cm2. The NIOSH methods require extraction, cleanup, and blow down, expensive preparation steps that could be eliminated by a simple DART/TOFMS method using direct analysis of cotton swab wipe samples. Reduced cost and increased simplicity of analyses for smoked drugs could lead to routine screening of structuresprior to sale and of motel rooms and rental units. Method. The cotton tips of swabs are dipped into a solvent and rolled across a 10 cm-square, back and forth in orthogonal directions, until the entire surface has been sampled in two directions, thereby distributing the analyte evenly around the tip’s circumference. After air drying, the swab tips, supported by a 3-feet long, ¼-inch square, aluminum bar resting on two N-scale model railroad flat cars pulled along track by fish line wrapped around a wheel turned by a small, variable-speed DC motor are introduced to the heated helium stream of a DART ion source. The area under the most abundant [M+H] +.or product ion chromatogram produced by the desorbed analyte is integrated to yield a measure of the amount present. Preliminary Data. Pseudoephedrine from a cold remedy tablet was used as a surrogate for methamphetamine in preliminary experiments. Using syringes or a sprayer, the analyte dissolved in water was deposited on a mirror, the mirror with two coats of acrylic latex paint, and household surfaces. Water, methanol, and 91% isopropanol (IPA) were used as solvents, and ISP provided twice the recovery as water from the mirror for pseudoephedrine. However, prior to this experiment, water was used with, a helium temperature setting of 275°C, and a CID voltage of 55 V. The m/z 148 product ion was the quantitation ion and provided a detection limit of 0.025 μg/100 cm 2 from a dynamic range study based on triplicate wipe samples at each level of analyte on the bare mirror squares. Because the analyte infuses into the paint, the expected detection limit for this surface will be greater. Standards of 10 smoked drugs and pseudoephrine (1 mg in 1 mL) should provide enough of the drugs to select the optimum solvent, helium temperature, CID voltage, and quantitation ion, and to determine detection limits from the mirror and paint for the drugs. Similar optimal analysis conditions and detection limits for the smoked drugs could provide sufficient sensitivities to screen for most of the drugs on an impermeable surface with a single analysis. All but one, tetrahydrocannabinol, include a non-aromatic N in their chemical structures and are expected to provide abundant [M-H]+ or product ions. Novel Aspect. Using an Autosampler/DART/TOFMS to simplify and economize analyses for smoked drugs recovered from interior surfaces
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GRANGE 10-008 ABSTRACT ASMSABS2010.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 15 KB, about PDF)GRANGE 10-008 FINAL POSTER ASMS10POSTPDF.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 720 KB, about PDF)