Dioxins are a class of very toxic compounds found throughout the world in the environment. Equipment sensitivity is of great importance for the analysis of low concentrations of these highly-toxic compounds. Historically, analysis and detection of dioxins was done with magnetic sector-type high-resolution mass spectrometers (HRMS). However, in recent years, the performance of triple quadrupole mass spectrometers (MS/MS) has improved significantly. In addition, the development of the Boosted Efficiency Ion Source (BEIS) offers compound-specific sensitivity up to 4 times greater than previous ion sources and provides accurate quantitation of dioxins at levels comparable to HRMS. Detection limits as low as 20 fg for Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) were achieved. In this study, we analyzed dioxins in about 250 samples of approximately 40 types of food and animal feed products using a GC-MS/MS with BEIS. Quantitation performance was evaluated by comparing the analysis results obtained by GCHRMS and GC-MS/MS. We also evaluated the number of analyses possible while maintaining sensitivity at low concentrations in order to verify the durability of the GC-MS/MS instrument.

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