Abstract: An analytical method was developed to simultaneously determine roxarsone, arsanilic and nitarsone in chicken by high performance liquid chromatography/inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS). Samples were extracted with methanol/water solution. The chromatographic separation was performed on a Phenomenex Luna C18  using methanol and water (containing 0.05% trifluoroacetic acid) as the mobile phase. Identification and quantification were achieved by using ICP-MS. Good linearity was observed in the range of 1 to 50 μg/kg with correlation coefficients above 0.99. The method was validated at the spike levels of 1, 2, 10 μg/kg. The validation results indicated that the average recoveries of arsenicum praeparatum ranged from 85.4% to 103.1% with a relative standard deviation of 3.3%－7.2%. The quantification limits of 3 arsenicum praeparatum were 1μg/kg. The method had good reproducibility, high sensitivity and simple pre-treatment. Its performance could meet both domestic and international legislation requirements. This method is applicable for simultaneous determination of arsenicum praeparatum in chicken.

Key words: high performance liquid chromatography/inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS), arsanilic, nitarsone, roxarsone, chicken, chicken liver