Simultaneous determination of amitraz and its metabolite residue in food animal tissues by gas chromatography-electron capture detector and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry with accelerated solvent extraction.

A new method has been developed for determination and confirmation of amitraz and its main metabolite, 2,4-dimethylaniline, in food animal tissues using gas chromatography-electron capture detector (GC-ECD) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry detector (GC-MS). This method is based on a new extraction procedure using accelerated solvent extraction (ASE). It consists of an n-hexane/methanol extraction step, a cleaning-up step by BakerBond octadecyl C(18) silica bonded cartridge, hydrolysis and derivatization to 2,4-dimethyl-7-F-butyramide for GC-ECD analysis. For confirmation using GC-MS, hydrolysis and derivatization were not needed. Parameters for extraction pressure, temperature and cycle of ASE, clean-up, derivatization and analysis procedure have been optimized. Spike recoveries from 50 to 300 microg/kg levels were found to be between 72.4 and 101.3% with relative standard deviation less than 11.5% in GC-ECD, from 5 to 20 microg/kg levels were found to be between 77.4 and 107.1% with relative standard deviation less than 11.6% in GC-MS. The LOD and LOQ are 5 and 10 microg/kg, respectively, for these two analytes using GC-ECD. For GC-MS, LOD and LOQ were 2 and 5 microg/kg, respectively. The rapid and reliable method can be used for characterization and quantification of residues of amitraz and its main metabolite, 2,4-dimethylaniline, in liver and kidney samples of swine, sheep and bovine.