Detection of 20 Phthalate Esters in Different Kinds of Food Packaging Materials by GC-MS/MS with Five Internal Standards

Abstract

Abstract Background: Phthalate esters (PAEs) are a group of chemical compounds widely used as plasticizers to increase the flexibility of plastics that are used in the manufacturing of kitchen utensils and food containers. Objective: In this study, a simple, rapid, and sensitive method for the determination of 20 PAEs in different kinds of food packaging materials has been developed. Methods: Samples injected with five internal standards were extracted with acetonitrile saturated with n-hexane and then detected by GC-MS/MS without a purification step. Results: The standard calibration curves were linear for all analytes over the concentration range of 5–500 μg/L, and the correlation coefficients ranged from 0.9913 to 0.9999. The LODs and LOQs were in the ranges of 1.7–62.5 and 5.5–208.3 μg/kg, respectively. The accuracy of this method was evaluated by measuring the recovery from spiked samples. The recoveries of all 20 phthalates from samples spiked at three different concentrations were measured, and the recovery was in the range of 82.1–110.8% and the relative standard deviation range of recovery result (n = 6) was 0.3–9.7%. Conclusions: The method presented here is simple, rapid, and sensitive and can be applied to large-scale detection of PAEs in plastic materials. Highlights: Instead of only one solvent, acetonitrile saturated with n-hexane was used as the extraction solvent. Samples were pretreated without a purification step. Five internal standards were used for quantitative determination.