A Novel Multi-ion Evaluation Scheme to Determine Stable Chlorine Isotope Ratios ( 37 Cl/ 35 Cl) of Chlordecone by LC-QTOF

authors

• Prieto-Espinoza Maria
• Malleret Laure
• Ravier Sylvain
• Höhener Patrick

keywords

• Stable isotopes
• Chlorine-37
• Polychlorinated molecules
• Compound-specific isotope analysis

document type

abstract

Organochlorinated pesticides are highly persistent organic pollutants having important adverse effects in the environment. To study their fate, compound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) may be used to investigate their degradation pathways and mechanisms but is currently limited to 13C isotope ratios. The assessment of 37Cl isotope ratios from mass spectra is complicated by the large number of isotopologues of polychlorinated compounds. For method development, chlordecone (C10Cl10O2H2; hydrate form), an organochlorine insecticide that led to severe contamination of soils and aquatic ecosystems of the French West Indies, was taken as a model analyte. Chlorine isotope analysis of chlordecone hydrate was evaluated using high-resolution liquid chromatography quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF-MS), enabling smooth ionization to detect the molecular ion. First, a new evaluation scheme is presented to correct for multiple isotope presence in polychlorinated compounds. The scheme is based on probability calculations of the most frequent isotopologues, distributions by binomial probability functions, and corrections for the presence of nonchlorine heavy isotopes. Second, mobile-phase modifiers, ionization energy (sampling cone tension) and scan time were optimized for accurate chlorine isotope ratios. Chlordecone standard samples were measured up to 10-fold and bracketed with a second chlordecone external standard. δ37Cl values were obtained after conversion to the SMOC scale by a two-point calibration. The robustness of the analysis method and evaluation scheme were tested and gave satisfactory results with standard errors (σm) of ±0.34‰ for precision and ±0.89‰ for long-term accuracy of chlorine isotope ratios of chlordecone hydrate. This work opens perspectives for applications of the C-Cl CSIA approach to investigate the fate of highly toxic and low reactive polychlorinated compounds in the environment.

more information