Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in rice grain dried by different processes: Evaluation of a quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged and safe extraction method

Evolution and applications of the QuEChERS method

“…Concerning their extraction using the QuEChERS method, most of the published works in the literature have analyzed the 16 PAHs included in the US EPA priority pollutants list [78][79][80][81][82][83][84] while others have determined only some of them [85][86][87][88][89][90], the analysis of PAH metabolites [e.g., monohydroxylated (OH-PAHs)] being less frequent [91]. For OH-PAHs, Knobel et al determined a group of five of them in cattle milk because of their relevance as exposure biomarkers, employing capillary-zone electrophoresis with UV detection for their analysis [91].…”

“…Thus, the type of analyzed matrices in the literature varies a lot and includes different types of meat [78,81,83,85], milk [91], fish [89,90] and seafood [78,79,82,84,86,88]. However, the method has also been applied to PAH analysis in some foods of vegetable origin that may also be contaminated during their drying process with wood burning [80,87]. Moreover, since the same contamination may occur when food is cooked in a grill using wood, the method was also applied with success by Kao et al to the extraction of PAHs in kindling free-charcoal grilled meat and seafood [78].…”

“…Taking into account the association that takes place between the planar hydrophobic chemical structure of PAHs and fatty components of the biological matrices, and considering the good recovery percentages obtained, they suggested that this mixture of solvents leads to more intimate interaction with fatty fish matrices, and that the miscibility of acetone and EtOAc with water allows recovery of PAHs trapped in water-sealed matrix pores, making them available for their transfer to isooctane. It is also worth mentioning that, due to the different natures of the analyzed samples, on some occasions, the addition of a certain amount of water has also been necessary to enable the extraction process [78,80,[81][82][83]87].…”

“…From review of the literature, it is also clear that the sorbent most commonly used for the d-SPE step has been PSA [79,80,82,84,86], in most cases with MgSO 4 , and also in combination with C 18 [78,81,83,85,[88][89][90][91]. However, Sadowska-Rociek et al [87] suggested an interesting alternative that involved adding PSA and SAX (a strong ion exchanger) after the study of several sorbent combinations (PSA, PSA+C 18 , PSA+GCB, PSA+NH 2 ).…”

“…In general, GC [78][79][80][81]83,85,[87][88][89] and LC [82,84] {also in its UHPLC format [82]} have been coupled to an MS detection system, though, for LC, FD was also found appropriate due to its high selectivity and sensitivity [86,90].…”