A New Approach to the Assessment of the Safety of Tea, Coffee, Cocoa, and Vegetable Oils, Based on the Rapid Screening of Samples for the Total Concentration of Fluorine-, Chlorine-, and Bromine-Containing Organic Compounds

Abstract

We propose a new approach to assessing the contamination of tea, coffee, cocoa, and vegetable oils with F-, Cl-, Br- and S-containing organic pesticides and other hazardous anthropogenic and natural compounds at a trace level. The approach ensures the rapid screening of test samples for the total concentration of all halogen and sulfur organic compounds present in the samples. Sample preparation is excluded. The procedure is based on the direct high-temperature oxidative conversion of a test sample under oxygen; the absorption of inorganic salts present in the sample in a reactor; the absorption of the conversion products of organic compounds of the sample, including the analyzed ones, by deionized water with the formation of F–, Cl–, Br– and SO $$_{4}^{{2 - }}$$ anions; and their determination in the absorbate by ion chromatography. This approach ensures the simultaneously reliable determination of all volatile, medium-volatile, and nonvolatile organohalogen and organosulfur compounds present in one sample and, thereby, improves the reliability of detection by eliminating their losses during the analysis.