Determination of Five Fluorescent Whitening Agents in Foam Plastic Tableware by High Performance Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry
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Abstract:
A simple and sensitive method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of five fluorescent whitening agents (FWA135, FWA184, FWA367, FWA368 and FWA393) in foam plastic tableware using high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS). The samples were extracted with trichloromethane, and the polymer in the extracts were precipitated by adding methanol. The separation of five FWAs was carried out on a Phenomenex kinetex C18 column (2.1 mm×100 mm, 2.6 μm) by gradient elution with 0.1% formic acid methanol and 0.1% formic acid as mobile phase. Electrospray ionization mass was operated in the positive mode (ESI+) using multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of five FWAby retention time and ion ratio. The result indicated that the linear correlation coefficients (r>0.995) of five FWAs were obtained with the linear relationship between 0.5 to 50 μg/L. The limits of detection (ILOD, S/N=3) were ranged from 0.1 μg/L to 0.5 μg/L, and the limits of qualification of the method (MLOQ, S/N=10) were varied from 0.4 μg/kg to 2.0 μg/kg. The recoveries of five FWAs from spiked samples at the spiking levels of 2 μg/kg, 8μg/kg and 200 μg/kg were between 86.4% and 98.4% with RSD (n=6) less than 3.9% to 8.1%. The method was simple and precise for the determination of five FWAs in foam plastic tableware.
