UV light impact on phthalates migration from children’s toys into artificial saliva

Abstract

Phthalates has been widely used in children?s toys as plastic plasticizers and softeners. Therefore, attention should be paid to plastic toys, especially those that children can put in their mouths. In this paper quantification of five phthalates: DMP, DnBP, BBP, DEHP and DnOP in plastic toys, as well as irradiation of toys with UV light was performed. After sample preparation and development of the liquid?liquid phthalate extraction method from artificial saliva phthalate quantitative determination using the GC?MS technique was performed. The mean recovery value for DEHP is 77.03?2.76 %. The determination of phthalate in the recipient models (artificial saliva and n-hexane) was performed after 6, 15 and 30 days of the migration test using the GC?MS technique. Based on the known mass % DEHP in the analyzed toys, the percentage of phthalate migration from each analyzed toy to the recipient model after 6, 15 and 30 days of the migration test was calculated. The results show that there is no significant migration of DEHP into artificial saliva, due to high polarity of the recipient (artificial saliva is polar), unlike n-hexane where the migration of DEHP is significant because it is a non-polar solvent.