Simultaneous chromatographic analysis of photoinitiators and amine synergists in food contact materials

Abstract

Photoinitiators (PIs) are components of UV-cured inks widely used in printing of food packaging. These substances can migrate into food and may be a hazard to human health. High-performance liquid chromatography with diode-array detection (HPLC-DAD) has been used for analysis of PIs and amine synergists in food packaging. Analysis was performed with a Kromasil C18 column (250 mm × 3.2 mm i.d., 5 μm particle size) with a binary mobile phase gradient prepared from acetonitrile and Milli-Q water. The flow rate was 0.5 mL min(-1). The method enables separation of fourteen PIs and amine synergists in a single run. The method was validated for linearity, repeatability, and limits of detection and quantification. Excellent sensitivity (LODs ≤ 1.56 μg dm(2)) and appropriate repeatability (RSD (n = 10) <0.9%) were achieved. Different types of food packaging material including plastic films, cardboard, and cans were analyzed and PIs were detected in 47% of the samples tested (n = 17). Positive samples were confirmed by use of LC-MS-MS in positive electrospray ionization (ESI) mode.

Comparative study of ink photoinitiators in food packages using gas chromatography with vacuum ultraviolet detection and gas chromatography with mass spectrometry

“…Moreover, relative differences among measured concentrations were not higher than 18%. In comparison with similar studies about PIs , we detected more PIs in samples of plastic and paper packages. The measured concentrations were even higher than those presented by others, previously.…”

“…All samples of packages were prepared according the procedure presented by Lago et al. . Each sample was weighed and cut into small pieces (∼1 cm 2 ).…”

“…Various articles have been published in the last ten years, presenting different analytical approaches to detect PIs in food (especially packaged milk [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], tea [10], fruit juice [13,19,20], wine [13], yoghurt, and sausage [19] or cereals, bread, rice, and pasta [21]), and in food plastic and paper packaging [13,19,20,[22][23][24][25]. Due to the complex matrix of both food or food packages, pretreatment methods such as conventional liquid-liquid extraction [12,16,17,[19][20][21][22][23]25], solid phase extraction [10,[13][14][15]24], or solid-phase microextraction [11,18] are necessary to extract and purify PIs. The main techniques utilized for the PI analysis are traditional GC-MS [11][12][13][18][19][20]…”

“…Due to the complex matrix of both food or food packages, pretreatment methods such as conventional liquid-liquid extraction [12,16,17,[19][20][21][22][23]25], solid phase extraction [10,[13][14][15]24], or solid-phase microextraction [11,18] are necessary to extract and purify PIs. The main techniques utilized for the PI analysis are traditional GC-MS [11][12][13][18][19][20]22,24], LC-MS [12,13], GC-MS/MS [10,14], UHPLC-MS/MS [15,21] or HPLC-diode array detection [16,17,20,23]. Another described technique, SFC coupled to photo diode array detection and MS/MS [25], has proven particularly useful and was successfully applied to the determination of this group of compounds during migration from polyethylene food packaging.…”

Simultaneous Determination of 10 Photoinitiators in Milk by Solid‐Phase Microextraction Coupled with Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectrometry

“…The determination methods for PIs residues in food mainly include high performance thin layer chromatography‐fluorescence detector (HPTLC‐FLD), HPTLC‐ESI/MS (Morlock and Schwack ), HPLC‐UVD (Sanches‐Silva and others ; Sanches‐Silva ), Micellar Electrokinetic Chromatography‐DAD (Lago and others ; Zhang and Jiao ), HPLC‐MS n (Bagnati and others ; Allegrone and others ; Shen and others ; Zhu and others ), GC‐MS (Deng and others ; Negreira and others ; Van Hoeck and others ), GC, and HPLC with mass spectrometry (Gil‐Vergara and others ). The determination samples in above methods include beverages and foodstuff, such as milk, yoghurt, fruit juices, wine, cake, bread, and cereals, and so on.…”