Identification of banned aromatic amines and their isomers 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 screen and confirm 24 banned aromatic amines and their 14 isomers at the same time. The main factors influencing the separation including the column, and the nature of make-up solvent were optimized. Under the optimized experimental conditions, the analytes were reduced to banned aromatic amine with sodium dithionite, extracted by methyl tert-butyl ether and loaded onto a ZORBAX SB-C18 column (150 mm x 2.1 mm, 5 μm) with a gradient elution of methanol and 0.1% formic acid aqueous 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. The correlation coefficients were higher than 0.99 and the limits of detection were in the range of 0.5-5 μg/kg. The method could screen and confirm the 24 banned aromatic amines and their 14 isomers at the same time. The results were 1.56 mg/kg of 4-chloroaniline, 0.34 mg/kg of o-toluidine, and 0.81 mg/kg of 2,6-toluylenediamine with the relative standard deviations ranging from 0.27% to 1.32% in actual samples. The results indicate that the developed method is simple, efficient and precise, and can be a reliable technique for the separation of the 24 banned aromatic amines and their 14 isomers in textile samples.