Abstract
A gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GC-MS) method was developed to assess the infant exposure assessment from four important polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) markers in infant formula powder: benzo[a]anthracene, chrysene, benzo[b]fluoranthene, and benzo[a]pyrene (collectively referred to as PAH4). The developed method required the addition of an isotopically labeled internal standard, sample extraction under alkali conditions, a saponification step, and a solid-phase extraction purification step. In a controlled spike test, the average recovery rates of PAH4 were 77.3% to 111.8% and the relative standard deviations were 4.8% to 14.2% (n = 6). The quantitative limit (LOQ) and detection limit (LOD) of the method were 0.5 and 0.1 μg·kg−1, respectively. The PAH4 content was analyzed in 30 commercially available infant formula powders. The PAH4 content was found to be in the range of 0.1 to 0.87 μg·kg−1. Combined with the daily intake of infant milk powder in China, the average and maximum daily exposure of BaP for stage-1 infants in China are 0.45 ng/kg.bw.d−1 and 1.9 ng/kg.bw.d−1 and the PAH4 values are 8.6 ng/kg.bw.d−1 and 18.6 ng/kg.bw.d−1, respectively. The PAH4 content in the tested infant formula powders sold in the China were sufficiently low, and all of the tested products were safe for consumption.
Highlights
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a group of carcinogens that are widely found in the environment and food products due to incomplete combustion and hightemperature decomposition of organic compounds
Because there are variety forms of PAHs, the European Commission (EC) has established safe level requirements of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP), as well as benzo[a]anthracene (BaA), chrysene (CHR), and benzo[b]fluoranthene (BbFA) as four key PAH markers. e regulations require the concentrations of BaP and the total PAH4 to be less than 1.0 μg·kg− 1 in infant formula powders
23.00 24.00 25.00 26.00 27.00 28.00 Time utilized, such as solid-phase extraction (SPE), and the ingredients in infant formula powder, there were several undesired drawbacks during our sample preparation procedure: it is difficult to extract all PAHs using the direct solvent extraction method; saponification directly, without a first purification step, would consume large amounts of reagent and might jeopardize the quality of the blank control; for purification, the SPE method alone does not deliver satisfactory results, combination utilization of QuEChERS with SPE had been used for PAHs analysis, and the rapid, quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe procedures will be more efficient; the procedures utilized in this study shows the same level efficiency compared with the QuEChERS method
Summary
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a group of carcinogens that are widely found in the environment and food products due to incomplete combustion and hightemperature decomposition of organic compounds. It is reported that PAH levels are highest in fatenriched foods, including infant formula powder, that contain vegetable oils such as coconut oil, palm oil, and soybean oil [4, 7,8,9]; the oils have been reported to contain PAH contamination to varying degrees in the order of corn oil, grape seed oil, groundnut oil, olive oil, palm oil, pumpkin seed oil, rapeseed oil, rice bran oil, soybean oil, and sunflower seed oil [10,11,12,13]; the PAHs enter infant formula powders through these vegetable oils. Because there are variety forms of PAHs, the European Commission (EC) has established safe level requirements of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP), as well as benzo[a]anthracene (BaA), chrysene (CHR), and benzo[b]fluoranthene (BbFA) as four key PAH markers (hereinafter referred to as PAH4) (requirement no. 835/2011). e regulations require the concentrations of BaP and the total PAH4 to be less than 1.0 μg·kg− 1 in infant formula powders
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