The mass spectrometry using an ion trap tandem mass spectrometer has been investigated to find optimum conditions for the analysis of benzo(a)pyrene (3,4-benzpyrene). The applicability to a real soil sample was also investigated to verify the usef ulness of the MS/MS (or collision induced dissociation, CID) analysis. The optimum CID condition was 1.5 and 0.45 for the RF excitation voltage and the q value, respectively. For comparison, CID and EI were applied to the analysis of a soil sample. CID analysis was more sensitive than EI analysis of the soil sample. The limit of detection (LOD) of benzo(a)pyrene was 3.18 ng mL-1 and 0.85 ng mL,-1 for EI and MS/MS analysis, respectively. The precision at the soil sample for EI and CID showed relative standard deviations of 6.1% and 4.1%, respectively, and the concentrations were 168 ㎍ kg-1 and 162 ㎍ kg-1 , respectively.