ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews fifteen years of activity in the field of explosives analysis. The work has been done in the analytical laboratory of the Israeli police. Until the late sixties, the use of explosives in criminal activity in Israel was rare. It was limited mainly to few cases involving illegal fishing with explosives. Identification of unexploded explosives is performed by the usual methods of modern qualitative analytical chemistry. In post-explosion cases, a most important step is the clean-up of the explosive residues. This step often includes extractions by organic solvents and elutions through chromatographic columns. In principle, the on-line combination of liquid-chromatography (LC) and mass spectrometry seems most promising. Unlike gas chromatography, LC operates in room temperatures so that thermally labile explosives do not decompose. Mass spectrometry is the best method available for the identification of sub-microgram amounts of organic compounds. The “on-line” combination is commercially available.
