The reliability of any analytical approach to pollutant evaluation
strongly depends on the possibility of identifying without
any ambiguity the structure of the analytes of interest, especially
when dealing with complex matrices. Since the retention
time alone does not often provide reliable results, GC/MS
has represented the method of choice either in the selected
ion monitoring (SIM) approach or better by the use of mass
spectrometry/mass spectrometry (MS/MS) methodology. This
bidimensional mass spectrometric analysis which can be performed
“in time” or “in space”, increases the sensitivity by
drastically reducing the background without loosing its speci-
ficity in analyte identification [23,28–34]. This property allows
the trace analysis of several pollutants from samples derived
from complex matrices, likely in the presence of interfer