Development and validation of GC/MS method for simultaneous determination of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in pork meat matrix

The major processes for introducing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in food are smoking and grilling of different products. But in addition, PAHs can permeate in the food chain due to their high lipophilicity and ability to be accumulated in specific tissue, through contaminated animal feed. Further, when some parts of these animals are marketed as food, the accumulated PAHs can go to the human organism. Some of them are classified as highly toxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic for animal and human organisms so they are under consideration of International and European legislation. This work reports development and validation of simple and fast GC/MS method for 16 PAHs determination. Comparison of two methods for sample preparation in pork meat matrix standard extraction/saponification procedure and modified QuEChERS method is also done. In addition, this paper report the calibration step of instrument and a recovery study for 16 PAHs in model pork meat, using modified QuEChERS procedure for sample pretreatment. The calibration step with accessible and suitable for use in real laboratory conditions internal standard (chrysene D-12) is done in the range 10-100 ppb using toluene as solvent. The obtained results show very good linearity (R-2 = 0.99 to 1.00). For the recovery study six model samples were spiked with 16 PAHs and they all are subjected to QuEChERS procedure. The recovery is calculated and the obtained data (71-120%) is in a good correlation with requirements of international legislation. Finally, LOD values for all 16 investigated compounds of modified GC/MS method and for the instrument were determined.

Automated summary

This paper discusses the sources of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in food, as well as the development and validation of a detection method. By comparing two sample preparation methods and conducting a recovery study, it was found that the results align with international regulatory requirements.