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Δ(9) -Tetrahydrocannabinol is the primary psychoactive component in cannabis, one of the most commonly used illicit drugs in the world. This paper describes a simple and rapid method for direct analysis of major metabolites of Δ(9) -tetrahydrocannabinol; 11-nor-Δ(9) -tetrahydrocannabinol-9-carboxylic acid and its glucuronide in urine by capillary electrophoresis/mass spectrometry. The only pretreatment needed for a urine sample was dilution with methanol containing an internal standard and centrifugation. Electrophoresis was carried out in an untreated fused-silica capillary (50 µm i.d. × 85 cm) filled with 40 m m ammonium formate (pH 6.4). An analysis could be completed within 10 min. For both compounds, the assay was linear over the range 0.1-10 µg/mL in urine with correlation coefficients (r(2) ) >0.99 and the limit of detection was 0.5 pg (10 nL injection). The detection yields and reproducibilities were determined at three different concentrations (0.1, 0.5 and 2 µg/mL in urine). The mean detection yields were 60-99%. The intra- and inter-day relative standard deviations of migration times were 0.063-0.19 and 0.18-0.36%, and those of peak areas were 4.2-18 and 5.9-25%, respectively. The proposed method successfully analyzed the urine samples of cannabis users., (Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

We describe a new practical capillary electrophoresis/electrospray ionization-mass spectrometry (CE/ESI-MS) method for the forensic analysis of phosphorus-containing amino acid-type herbicides, glyphosate (GLYP), glufosinate (GLUF) and bialaphos (BIAL). A new sheathless interface, a high sensitivity porous sprayer (HSPS), was used in this study. The limits of detections of GLYP, GLUF and BIAL were 7.6, 0.61 and 0.57 pg, respectively. These values were 4-36 times lower than these obtained by conventional CE/ESI-MS using a sheath liquid. The developed method was successfully applied to the analysis of beverages spiked with the herbicides., (2011 © The Japan Society for Analytical Chemistry)