Determination of Nine Bisphenol-Diglycidyl Ethers in Human Breast Milk by Ultrahigh-Performance Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry.

Abstract

Because of their widespread use, and the mutagenicity and teratogenicity observed in in vitro studies, bisphenol-diglycidyl ethers (BDGEs) were suspected of posing health risks to humans, especially to infants. Quantifying exposure of BDGEs from breast milk is essential in assessing the potential health risks of these ubiquitous compounds to infants. However, there is no reported analytical method for the determination of BDGEs in breast milk. In this context, we developed a rapid and sensitive method based on ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) to measure nine BDGEs in breast milk. The analytes were extracted with acetonitrile and fat was removed by freezing under -20 °C. The extracts were further purified by PRiME HLB solid-phase extraction (SPE) cartridge. The limits of detection (LODs) and quantification (LOQs) for the analytes were 0.033-0.500 and 0.100-1.500 μg L-1, respectively. The recoveries of BDGEs were ranged from 71.33% to 114.33%. Good method reproducibility regarding intra- and interday precision was observed, yielding relative standard deviations (RSDs) less than 11.81% and 10.83%, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied to 20 breast milk samples. BADGE·2H2O, BADGE·HCl·H2O, BADGE·H2O, BADGE·HCl, BFDGE·2H2O, and BFDGE·2HCl were detected. BFDGE·2HCl was the dominant BDGE with detection rate of 65.0% and the concentration ranging from 0.4 to 1.0 μg L-1. This is the first report describing the occurrence of BDGEs in breast milk.