Determination of total extractable organofluorine (EOF) in food contact materials and target and non-target analysis of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances using LC–MS/MS and LC–HRMS simultaneously coupled to ICP-MS

Abstract

Food contact materials (FCMs) from three countries were analysed for all extractable organofluorines (EOFs) from the materials and subsequently by target and non-target analysis for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The EOF varied by two orders of magnitude for FCM from UK and Saudi Arabia ranging between 2.14 and 483 ng cm−2 (0.2–48 ng g−1) showing that one quarter of all samples were above the Danish regulation for PFAS in FCM. Target PFAS showed high variability in composition and accounted for less than 1% of the EOF. Non-target PFAS screening using HPLC–ICP-MS and coupled simultaneously to HRMS showed the occurrence of organofluorines which were identified by neither LC–MS/MS nor LC–HRMS. This illustrates that the current target PFAS approaches fail to identify EOFs from FCM, which would be a problem with the new EU proposal to ban all PFAS.