Ion mobility spectrometry evaluation of cocaine occupational exposure in forensic laboratories.

An approach, based on ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) has been developed for the control of cocaine in air of the breathing zone of operators, in laboratory surfaces and in nasal mucus of employees to evaluate cocaine exposure in a forensic laboratory. The analytical methodology has been validated in terms of accuracy, precision and limits of detection and results obtained were statistically comparable with those obtained by liquid chromatography. Cocaine concentration in laboratory air increases from 100 ± 35 ng m(-3) of a normal day to 10,000 ng m(-3) during the manipulation of cocaine seizures.

Detection and characterization of emerging psychoactive substances by ion mobility spectrometry.

Rapid detection and identification of novel psychoactive substances (NPS) continues to present significant analytical challenges to forensic and analytical chemists. Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) has been traditionally considered as the analytical technique of choice to detect illicit drugs in security points in airports, borderlines and customs. Databases of the reduced mobility (K0 ) values of illicit drugs are available in the scientific literature and they should be completed with data of emerging designer drugs.

A green method for the determination of cocaine in illicit samples.

Direct determination of cocaine in untreated seized samples has been made based on diffuse reflectance measurements of the near infrared (NIR) radiation through samples contained inside standard glass vials. The method used a series of previously analyzed samples, by the reference gas chromatography method, to build a partial least squares calibration model which was validated using an independent set of samples. The use of a general model for samples containing from 11.

Nondestructive direct determination of heroin in seized illicit street drugs by diffuse reflectance near-infrared spectroscopy.

A new method has been developed for the fast and nondestructive direct determination of heroin in seized street illicit drugs using partial least-squares regression analysis of diffuse reflectance near-infrared spectra. Data were obtained from untreated samples placed in standard glass chromatography vials. A heterogeneous population of 31 samples, previously analyzed by a reference method, was employed to build the calibration model and to have a separated validation set.