Development and validation of a multi-analyte GC-MS method for the determination of 84 substances from plastic food contact materials

Emmanouil D Tsochatzis,Eddo Hoekstra,Hendrik Emons,Joao Alberto Lopes

doi:10.1007/s00216-020-02758-7

Emmanouil D Tsochatzis, Eddo Hoekstra + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-020-02758-7

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Abstract

Chemical substances shall not migrate from food contact materials (FCM) at levels that are potentially harmful for the consumers. Each of the current analytical methods applied to verify the migration of substances from FCM covers only one or few substances. There is a very limited number of publications on the development of analytical methods allowing the simultaneous determination of several classes of FCM substances, and almost none of them reported methods entirely dedicated to the ones in the positive list of Commission Regulation (EU) No. 10/2011 for plastic FCMs. Therefore, a simple, sensitive and reliable multi-analyte method was developed for the analysis of FCM substances in food simulants. It employs an optimised liquid-liquid extraction with dichloromethane as extraction solvent in the presence of 10% m/v NaCl, followed by quantitative analysis with gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS). A combination of total ion chromatograms (TICs) and extracted ion chromatograms (EICs) was used. The optimisation and validation of the method have been carried out according to current international guidelines. Adequate sensitivity was demonstrated in the selected concentration ranges for most of the analytes, with limits of quantification (LOQs) at least three times lower than the legislative limit, when existing. The results showed that the method is sufficiently accurate for the majority of substances, with recoveries between 70 and 115% and relative standard deviations (RSDs) smaller than 20% at three concentration levels. The method was applied to the analysis of some FCM multilayers. The method allows, for the first time, the simultaneous quantification of 84 FCM substances in two of the official food simulants (A and C) at levels of a few ng g−1.Graphical abstract

Highlights

Human exposure to chemicals from food contact materials (FCM) occurs mainly as a result of migration from materialsElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.The European Union (EU) has set up with Regulation (EU) No 10/2011 a positive list of substances that are allowed to be used in plastic FCM [2]
It has been taken into account for the present study the chemical structure of substances potentially migrating from plastic FCMs, the availability of well characterised analytical standards and a preference for the instrumental approaches intended to be used
The used liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) method was based on the sample preparation procedure known as QuEChERS [19] and on previous work carried at the EURL-FCM, with slight modifications [20]

Summary

Introduction

Human exposure to chemicals from food contact materials (FCM) occurs mainly as a result of migration from materials. This method should be simple and accurate, as well as being applicable to the analysis of certain official (liquid) food simulants from EU regulation. In order to select the group of target analytes for the development of the multi-analyte method, a strategy had to be developed It has been taken into account for the present study the chemical structure of substances potentially migrating from plastic FCMs, the availability of well characterised analytical standards and a preference for the instrumental approaches intended to be used. The solvents have to be compatible with GC-MS, i.e. they should not add any analytical interference or shorten the lifetime of the analytical column

Materials and methods

Method performance

Results and discussion

Method validation

Conclusions

Compliance with ethical standards