Abstract
A fast and automated approach has been developed for the tentative identification and risk assessment of unknown substances in plastic food contact materials (FCM) by GC-Q-Orbitrap HRMS. The proposed approach combines GC-HRMS full scan data acquisition coupled to Compound Discoverer™ 3.2 software for automated data processing and compound identification. To perform the tentative identification of the detected features, a restrictive set of identification criteria was used, including matching with the NIST Mass Spectral Library, exact mass of annotated fragments, and retention index calculation. After the tentative identification, a risk assessment of the identified substances was performed by using the threshold of toxicological concern (TTC) approach. This strategy has been applied to recycled low-density polyethylene (LDPE), which could be used as FCM, as a proof-of-concept demonstration. In the analyzed sample, 374 features were detected, of which 83 were tentatively identified after examination of the identification criteria. Most of these were additives, such as plasticizers, used in a wide variety of plastic applications, oligomers of LDPE, and substances with chemical, industrial, or cosmetic applications. The risk assessment was performed and, according to the TTC approach, the obtained results showed that there was no risk associated with the release of the identified substances. However, complementary studies related to the toxicity of the unidentified substances and the potential mixture toxicity (cocktail effects) should be conducted in parallel using bioassays.
Highlights
In Europe, plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food should comply with the Commission Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 [1], which contains the ‘Union list of authorized monomers, other starting substances, macromolecules obtained from microbial fermentation, additives and polymer production aids’ that can be used for the manufacture of plastic food contact materials (FCM) [1]
The non-target analysis of recycled low-density polyethylene (LDPE), which could be used as FCM, has only been previously considered by our research group, using an liquid chromatography (LC)-high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) approach [4]
LDPE, which could be used as FCM, by gas chromatography (GC)-Q-Orbitrap HRMS
Summary
In Europe, plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with food should comply with the Commission Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 [1], which contains the ‘Union list of authorized monomers, other starting substances, macromolecules obtained from microbial fermentation, additives and polymer production aids’ (intentionally added substances, IAS) that can be used for the manufacture of plastic FCM [1]. Regarding the most common analytical techniques, most of the published papers dealing with the non-target analysis of plastic FCM are based on liquid chromatography (LC) coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) using hybrid mass analyzers, such as quadrupole–time-of-flight (Q-TOF) [11,12] or Q-Orbitrap [4,13,14,15,16]. In this regard, low-energy ionization sources, such as electrospray ionization (ESI), allow observation of the molecular ion, easing significantly the identification of substances
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