Trace determination of herbicides in estuarine waters by liquid chromatography-high-flow pneumatically assisted electrospray mass spectrometry.

High-flow pneumatically assisted electrospray (ESP) was applied to the characterization of triazine (atrazine, simazine, ametryne, cyanazine, deethylatrazine and deisopropylatrazine), phenylurea (chlortoluron++, isoproturon, diuron, linuron and diflubenzuron) and other priority herbicides (alachlor, metolachlor). In LC-ESP-MS the [M+Na]+ ion was used as the base peak in most cases, with the exception of chlorotriazines, which showed [M+H]+ as the base peak. When LC-TSP-MS was used, [M+H]+ was the base peak for many of the pesticides, with the exception of linuron and diflubenzuron, which showed [M+NH4]+ as the base peak. The ESP results were compared with those obtained with thermospray (TSP). LC-TSP-MS offered greater sensitivity for triazines than phenylurea herbicides, whereas the use of LC-ESP-MS offered an enhancement in sensitivity for phenylurea herbicides. As regards the fragmentation obtained using both techniques, ESP offered a considerable amount of structural information for the different chlorotriazines studied when the extraction voltage was increased from 20 to 40 V. Liquid-liquid extraction with dichloromethane was used for the trace enrichment of the different herbicides in estaurine water samples from the Elorn river (France). The presence of the different triazine metabolites, atrazine, simazine, metolachlor, isoproturon and diuron was confirmed by both LC-MS techniques.