Determination of free carcinogenic aromatic amines in textiles by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-linear ion trap/orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry

Abstract

A method of ultra-performance liquid chromatography-linear ion trap/orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry (UPLC-LTQ/Orbitrap MS) was used to determine 24 free carcinogenic aromatic amines in textiles. The main factors influencing the method, including the extraction solvent, the extraction temperature and the extraction time, were optimized. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the analytes were extracted by dichloromethane for 10 min and loaded into a ZORBAX SB-C18 column (150 mm x 2.1 mm, 5 µm) with a gradient elution of methanol and 0.1% aqueous formic acid solution, and finally detected by LTQ/Orbitrap MS. The screening and quantitative analysis were carried out by the accurate mass of quasi-molecular ion and the peak in extracted chromatogram with accurate mass respectively. The correlation coefficients (R2) were higher than 0.99. The recoveries were 87.8%-105.6% with the RSDs were 1.6%-3.4%. The limits of detection were 0.5-1 µg/kg, and the limits of quantification were 1.5-3 µg/kg. The proposed method was applied to 14 textile samples containing spandex. 4,4'-Diaminodiphenylmethane was determined in five samples and the contents were 0.21-25.6 mg/kg. The results indicate that the developed method is a simple, efficient, precise and reliable technique for the determination of free carcinogenic aromatic amines in textiles.