Mass Spectrometry for Trace Analysis of Explosives in Water

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Abstract
Harmful explosives can accumulate in natural waters over the long term during their testing, usage, storage, and dumping and can pose a health risk to humans and the environment. Mass spectrometry (MS) has become the most successful technology for the analysis of such compounds in water throughout the North America and Europe. During the past decade, improvements have occurred for MS analysis in understanding explosives ion behavior and the influence of additives and reagent gases on the formation of ions. Novel approaches also have been developed for fast MS analysis of explosives. These advances motivated an update from previous discussions of MS response to explosives. Recent findings collected from the past ten years have been assessed to provide a comprehensive view of the detection of explosives by MS. This review focuses on the most commonly used MS-based methods and newer developments for the MS analysis of explosives in water, with particular attention to mass identified ions and the performance of the methods. We also include results from comparative studies of explosives detection involving MS-methods that use various ionization techniques.

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