The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) released the first Semivolatile Organic Compounds (SVOC) method by Gas Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry (Method 8270) at the end of 1980. It is a common method used in almost all environmental laboratories looking to analyze semivolatile organic compounds in extracts prepared from many types of solid waste matrices, soils, air sampling media, and water.1 Since then, single quadrupole mass spectrometers have become much more sensitive and the source fragmentation has changed. Many original assumptions2 about the origin and nature of the ion species have proven to be wrong or require correction, while the new generations of the mass spectrometers have proven to provide more response in the high-mass region,3 resulting in adjustment of the tuning criteria to be met.4 To adjust to these changes, the EPA has changed the ion abundance criteria for the passing of DFTPP ion ratio criteria in EPA Method 8270D.
This application note shows how the Thermo Scientific™ ISQ™ 7000 single quadrupole GC-MS system can meet Method 8270D requirements with the extended dynamic range detection system. The working method range was shown to be 0.2–200 ppm using the same column.