"After thorough evaluation of several competitive products, we found that the triple quadrupole design offered us excellent quantitation and consistent limits of detection"
Scientists at the Central Science Laboratory in York have recently added two more API 2000 LC/MS/MS instruments to their large portfolio of mass spectrometers to cope with the department's increase in workload.
Mark Sykes, LC-MS section head for pesticides in the Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines group, explained the role of the Applied Biosystems instruments at CSL: "Our API 2000 instruments are used to analyse pesticide residues in a diverse range of commodities, for both government surveillance programmes and as a commercial analytical service.
"After thorough evaluation of several competitive products, we found that the triple quadrupole design of the API 2000 system offered us excellent quantitation and consistent limits of detection.
"We have found that the instruments perform in a stable and predictable manner, both between instruments and over time and, as most of our pesticide analyses do not use internal standards, this stability is important in allowing us to maintain the standard required for ISO 17025 accreditation.
"The sensitivity, although not as high as that of more expensive instruments, is quite sufficient for reliable quantitation of most important pesticides at the required limit of 0.01mg per kg of food.
"Overall, the price and performance ratio was ideal for our needs".
James Startin, principal mass spectrometrist, added: "The API 2000 system is straightforward to use and it is easy to queue different applications and analysis batches while keeping the corresponding files separate.
"They allow us to offer reliable, cost-effective analysis of a number of otherwise problematic pesticides, for example, those that are not amenable to GC or to HPLC with UV or fluorescence detection.
"For this reason, we expect LC-MS to be of increasing importance for routine, cost-effective determination of pesticides in the future."
