Selective and sensitive trace analysis of sulfur mustard with thermal desorption and two-dimensional gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

An improved method is presented for the trace analysis of sulfur mustard (HD) in biological samples, such as blood and tissue from laboratory animals. Using the internal standard method and liquid–liquid extraction with ethyl acetate, up to 400 μL of the extract was injected by thermal desorption from Tenax and analyzed by two-dimensional GC–MS/EI in SIM mode. The analysis was compared with a direct GC injection. Reversed thermal desorption was used as a tool for handling heavily contaminated (fat) samples, thus preventing contamination of the injection system and pre-column. A successful analytical configuration has been set up for the bioanalysis of HD at the low, toxicologically relevant pM level. A detection limit of 10 pg mL−1 blood or pg g−1 tissue of sulfur mustard (S/N = 3) was established by using this configuration.