“…Historically, isotope labeling has often been employed to examine the mechanisms of fragmentation in the mass spectrometer, but the influence of isotopic substitution on the kinetics has not commanded nearly as many efforts. Early observations describe the influence of deuterium substitution on ion-source reactions by examining peak intensities in conventional mass spectra (McFadden & Wahrhaftig, 1956;Kropf et al, 1960;Natalis, 1964;McLeod & Djerassi, 1967;Corval & Masclet, 1972;Eadon & Zawalski, 1977;Mruzek & Bouchoux, 1980;Russell, 1993), but these reflect reactions of ions with a wide range of internal energies, and in turn a wide range of rate constants. The results are not easily interpreted in terms of specific isotope effects, as the influence of isotopic substitution on relative reaction rates may vary considerably when ions of quite different internal energy are concerned.…”