Direct determination of acrylamide in potato chips by using headspace solid-phase microextraction coupled with gas chromatography-flame ionization detection

Abstract

Acrylamide is a potentially toxic and carcinogenic substance present in many high-consumption foods. Recently, this matter has been placed in category of “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen” by National Toxicology Program (NTP). Therefore, simple and cost-effective determination of acrylamide in food samples has attracted intense interest. The most reported techniques for this purpose are GC–MS and LC–MS, which are very expensive and available in few laboratories. In this research, for the first time, a rapid, easy and low-cost method is introduced for sensitive and precise determination of acrylamide in foodstuffs, using gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID) system after its direct trapping in the upper atmosphere of samples by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME). The effects of main experimental variables were studied and the optimized parameters were obtained as the type of fiber, carboxen/divinylbenzene/polydimethylsiloxane (CAR/DVB/PDMS); extraction time, 30min; extraction temperature, 60°C; moisture content, 10µL water per 1g of sample; desorption time, 2min; and desorption temperature, 230°C. The linear calibration graph was obtained in the range of 0.77–50µgg−1, with regression coefficient of 0.998. The detection and quantification limits of the proposed method were 0.22 and 0.77µgg−1, respectively. The recoveries, for different food samples, were 79.6–95.7%. The repeatability of measurements, expressed as relative standard deviation (RSD), were found to be 4.1–8.0% (n=9). The proposed HS-SPME-GC-FID method was successfully carried out for quantifying of trace levels of acrylamide in some processed food products (chips and French fries), sold in open local markets.