Levels of bisphenol A and bisphenol F in canned foods in Iranian markets

ABSTRACT

Bisphenol A and bisphenol F are chemical substances widely used in industry as monomers in the production of epoxy resins and polycarbonates, and as antioxidants in PVC. Epoxy resins are used as inner surface coating of food and beverage cans. The contamination of cans' content by bisphenol A and bisphenol F may pose a serious threat to human because of their estrogenic activity. In this study, the concentration of bisphenol A and bisphenol F in 48 cans of different kinds of foods [corn, tomato paste, stew and tuna fish] were determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry after solvent extraction with acetonitrile and preconcentration by headspace-solid-phase microextraction [HS-SPME]. Quantitative analysis was carried out based on spiked calibration samples and analyses were performed for each sample in triplicate. Bisphenol F was not detected in any of the canned foods with detection limits of 0.10 micro g/kg. There were significant differences among the mean concentrations of bisphenol A in all kinds of canned foods. The mean concentrations of bisphenol A increased significantly all samples after heating in [ANOVA p<0.05 and Kruskal-Wallis test p<0.05]; also tuna fish samples were found to be probably the most polluted groups in this study