Mass-spectrometry-derived data as possible predictive method for environmental persistence of organic molecules

Persistence of organic chemicals is a key point in the description of the environmental fate of compounds. In this work the hypothesis of the use of mass-spectrometry-derived data as a measure of the instability of a chemical is presented. Information from electron-ionisation-derived fragmentation were evaluated as a predictive tool for the estimation of the environmental degradability of organic substances. Different methods of interpreting the fragmentation patterns were evaluated. The results obtained for several chemical classes of pesticides and some degradation products were discussed in relation to the persistence values published in literature.