Analysis of indandione anticoagulant rodenticides in animal liver by eluent generator reagent free ion chromatography coupled with electrospray mass spectrometry.

A novel analytical method has been developed for simultaneous determination of four indandione anticoagulant rodenticides (diphacinone, chlorophacinone, pindone and valone) in animal liver tissues by eluent generator reagent free ion chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (RFIC-ESI-MS). After the rodenticides were extracted from homogenized animal liver tissues with methanol-acetonitrile (10/90, v/v), the extracts were subjected to a solid-phase extraction (SPE) process using Oasis HLB cartridges. The IC separation was carried out on an IonPac AS11 analytical column (250 mm x 4.0 mm) using 10% methanol in a gradient of KOH solution at a constant flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The objective compounds were ionized by negative ion pneumatically assisted electrospray and detected in the selected ion monitoring (SIM) mode. Warfarin was applied as an internal standard (IS) for the compensation of the losses in the course of sample processing and the sensitivity drift of the detector, linear calibration functions were calculated for all analytes. The relative average recoveries of the objective compounds spiked in animal liver tissues were between 83.4 and 104.9%. The limits of quantification (LOQs) were 0.2-1.0 ng/g for them. Within-day and day-to-day relative standard deviations (RSDs) were less than 10.4 and 13.3%, respectively. It was confirmed that this method could be used in a toxicological analysis. The coupling of IC to MS provided a new analytical tool to the analysts faced with the requirement of separating and analyzing indandione rodenticides in animal livers.