UHPLC-high-resolution mass spectrometry determination of bisphenol A and plastic additives released by polycarbonate tableware: influence of ageing and surface damage

A new UHPLC-ESI-Orbitrap method for the identification and the quantitative determination of bisphenol A and some common additives employed in plastic manufacturing has been developed and validated. The method has been applied to evaluate the migration from 14 samples of tableware of different age and degree of surface damage, in both ethanol and isooctane (used as food simulants according to EU plastic regulation). Bisphenol A, three UV light absorbers, and one whitening agent were detected and quantified. Data were analyzed with the aim of exploring a possible correlation between bisphenol A and additives release, ageing, and surface integrity. A high correlation between age of samples, surface damage, and bisphenol A migration has been evaluated, while the release of additives was not correlated with other parameters. Obtained data showed for the first time that the release of bisphenol A seems to be more connected to ageing than to scratches and cracks occurrence

High performance liquid chromatographic phenolic compounds fingerprint for authenticity assessment of honey

BACKGROUND: Phenolic compound profiles of 20 honeys of different botanical origin (eucalyptus, citrus, chestnut and linden) were obtained by high-performance liquid chromatography with ultraviolet detection after solid phase extraction, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the fingerprint method for monofloral honey discrimination. RESULTS: A total of 58 peaks were detected at λ = 280 nm. Distinctive phenolic compound profiles were obtained in which both the nature and the relative amount of the detected compounds were characteristic for different botanical source honeys. In order to detect sample groupings, chromatographic peak areas were submitted to principal component analysis. Then linear discriminant analysis was carried out on the first three principal components. In addition, linear discriminant analysis was carried out on the 58 variables, allowing the selection of five variables able to discriminate honeys of different botanical origin. CONCLUSION: The chemometric evaluation of the phenolic compound profiles yielded classification models able to group honey samples according to their floral source with an excellent degree of agreement. The main advantage of the fingerprint approach with respect to traditionalmethods is that it does not require time-consuming identification and quantification of the analytes. The method proved to be effective for the assessment of honey authenticity

Determination of nitrates, nitrites and oxalates in food products by capillary electrophoresis with pH-dependent electroosmotic flow reversal.

This paper describes an innovative and rapid capillary electrophoretic method for the simultaneous analysis of nitrates. nitrites and oxalates, which are anions of food interest. The novelty of our method is based on reversing the electroosmotic flow without using any buffer additive nor performing a capillary coating, but simply employing a buffer at low pH values. The analytical conditions have been optimised and the proposed method has been fully validated following the EURACHEM guidelines. The method has been successfully applied to the analysis of different vegetable samples: furthermore nitrates' content has been evaluated for the first time in table sugars and dietary fibres. A comparison of our results with those obtained by a common HPLC method has also been carried out