Characterization of organophosphorous insecticides in visceral samples by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

Organophosphorous insecticides are one of the pre-dominant killer substances found in poisoning cases in India. Correct identification of an individual insecticide will be an invaluable support bolh during investigation and in conviction of criminal cases in courts of law. Quality and quantity of the insecticides available in the visceral samples restricts the use of normal analytical methods for their identification. Gas Chromatographic-Mass Speclrometric technique has been used in present study due to its inherent qualify to deal with very low quantitiw of the samples. which may be present even in contaminated form. In present study, some characteristic ions have been selected from the electron impact ionlsation mass spectra of insecticides, which categorize the substance belonging to a particular group of organophosphorous insecticides with a specific chemical structure. The same spectrum was further scrutinized to locate smaller fragments of characteristic ions for the individualization of a particular insecticide. The study has proved useful in providing solution to the problem to a large extentfor organophosphorous insecticides usually encountered in poisoning cases.