Mineral Oil Residues in Food Sample Preparation Part 3 Fract and Collect

Introduction

Mineral oil residues in food gain a lot of public concern in the recent years. No matter if talking about rice, noodles, olive oil or chocolate, there are numerous examples of mineral oil contaminations in food. At the moment the challenges we face are the ubiquitous presence of mineral oils from raw material to the finished product and the big lack of information concerning composition, health effects, analysis and regulatory limits. Mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOH) are divided into the two groups mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH) and mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH). The MOSH consist of branched and unbranched open chain hydrocarbons called paraffines and cyclic hydrocarbons with at least one saturated ring called naphthenes. They can accumulate in the human body and cause granulomas. The MOAH consist of aromatic substance classes, that can be highly alkylated and have 1-4 rings. They make up 15-30% of the whole mineral oil fraction and contain potential mutagenic and carcinogenic substances. The determination of MOs in food can be done by an automated LC-GC-FID system for routine analysis which is shown in Figure 1. However, using this method with flame ionisation detection gives only information about the total concentration of MOH, without any further information about the constituents. The Fract & Collect-tool gives the opportunity to collect MOSH and MOAH fractions after the HPLC fractionation and to use them for further analysis on GC-MS or 2D-Comprehensive GCxGC-MS.

October 10, 2019 GMT