One step derivatization with British Anti-Lewsite in combination with gas chromatography coupled to triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry for the fast and selective analysis of inorganic arsenic in rice

• A new fast and selective GC-MS/MS for the inorganic arsenic analysis in rice was developed.
• One step derivatization of inorganic arsenic with British Anti-Lewsite was achieved.
• The analytical method was selective, precise, and accurate for inorganic arsenic analysis in rice.
• The GC-MS/MS had far greater signal to noise ratio on the iAs analysis than the GC-MS.
• The gas chromatographic running time for the analysis inorganic arsenic was 2.5 min.

We developed a new fast and selective analytical method for the determination of inorganic arsenic (iAs) in rice by a gas chromatography – tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) in combination with one step derivatization of inorganic arsenic (iAs) with British Anti-Lewsite (BAL). Two step derivatization of iAs with BAL has been previously performed for the GC-MS analysis. In this paper, the quantitative one step derivatization condition was successfully established. The GC-MS/MS was carried out with a short nonpolar capillary column (0.25 mm × 10 m) under the conditions of fast oven temperature ramp rate (4 °C/s) and high linear velocity (108.8 cm/s) of the carrier gas. The established GC-MS/MS method showed an excellent linearity (r2 > 0.999) in a tested range (0.2–100.0 μg L−1), ultra-low limit of detection (LOD, 0.08 pg), and high precision and accuracy. The GC-MS/MS technique showed far greater selectivity (22.5 fold higher signal to noise ratio in rice sample) on iAs than GC-MS method. The gas chromatographic running time was only 2.5 min with the iAs retention time of 1.98 min. The established method was successfully applied to quantify the iAs contents in polished rice. The mean iAs content in the Korean polished rice (n = 27) was 66.1 μg kg−1 with the range of 37.5–125.0 μg kg−1. This represents the first report on the GC-tandem mass spectrometry in combination with the one step derivatization with BAL for the iAs speciation in rice. This GC-MS/MS method would be a simple, useful and reliable measure for the iAs analysis in rice in the laboratories in which the expensive and element specific HPLC-ICP-MS is not available.

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