Determination of the migration of eight parabens from antibacterial plastic packaging by liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry

Abstract

A method based on reversed-phase liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) coupled with solid phase extraction (SPE) was developed and validated for qualitative and quantitative detection of eight parabens in four types of food simulant sample, including distilled water, 3% acetic acid, 10% ethanol and olive oil. The detection limits of the eight parabens after the SPE procedure were in the range of 0.005–0.010 μg L⁻¹ in distilled water, 0.006–0.015 μg L⁻¹ in 3% acetic acid, 0.005–0.017 μg L⁻¹ in 10% ethanol and 0.2–0.6 μg L⁻¹ in olive oil. The relative standard deviations (RSDs) were in the range of 1.90–8.48% for distilled water, 1.01–3.73% for 3% acetic acid, 5.78–12.97% for 10% ethanol and 0.29–5.40% for olive oil. The proposed method was applied to assess the migration of parabens from real antibacterial plastic packaging samples with satisfactory results.