Organophosphate esters (OPEs) in plastic food packaging: non-target recognition, and migration behavior assessment.

Organophosphate esters (OPEs) are widely used as plasticizers in plastic food packaging; however, the migration of OPEs from plastic to food is largely unstudied. We do not even know the specific number of OPEs that exist in the plastic food packaging. Herein, an integrated target, suspect, and nontarget strategy for screening OPEs was optimized using ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography-high-resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS). The strategy was used to analyze 106 samples of plastic food packaging collected in Nanjing city, China, in 2020. HRMS allowed full or tentative identification of 42 OPEs, of which seven were reported for the first time. Further, oxidation products of bis(2,4-di-tert-butylphenyl) pentaerythritol diphosphite (AO626) in plastics were identified, implying that the oxidation of organophosphite antioxidants (OPAs) could be an important indirect source of OPEs in plastics. The migration of OPEs was examined with four simulated foods. Twenty-six out of 42 OPEs were detected in at least one of the four simulants, particularly isooctane, in which diverse OPEs were detected at elevated concentrations. Overall, the study supplements the list of OPEs that humans could ingest as well as provides essential information regarding the migration of OPEs from plastic food packaging to food.

Dietary intake assessment of known and unknown organophosphate esters (OPEs) in foodstuffs via high-resolution mass spectrometry.

We applied an integrated target, suspect, and non-target screening strategy to analyze known and unknown organophosphate esters (OPEs) in 107 foodstuffs collected from Nanjing City, China, in 2020. Twelve out of 19 target OPEs were detectable in at least one of the analyzed samples. Among the nine food categories, meat samples were contaminated the most severely with a mean ΣOPEs concentration of 68.5 ng/g wet weight (ww). In most food categories, tris(2,4-di-tert-butylphenyl) phosphate was the predominant OPE with a mean concentrations of 2.26 ng/g ww. In the food extract samples, suspect and non-target analysis identified other 6 suspect OPEs and 1 non-target OPE, of which two were fully identified as tri-m-cresyl phosphate, and trihexyl phosphate. Based on the measured OPE concentrations, we estimated the daily per capita dietary intakes of ΣOPEs for Nanjing residents to be 423 ng/kg bw/day, which is less than the reference dosage value of each OPE. Collectively, this study provides new information regarding the comprehensive identification of OPEs in foodstuffs, and revealed the importance of dietary risk assessment of this emerging class of contaminants.

High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Screening of Emerging Organophosphate Esters (OPEs) in Wild Fish: Occurrence, Species-Specific Difference, and Tissue-Specific Distribution.

There is a dearth of information regarding the pollution status of emerging organophosphate esters (OPEs) in wild fish. Here, we optimized and validated a quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe (QuEChERS) pretreatment method, which was further applied for target, suspect, and nontarget screening of OPEs in n = 48 samples of wild fishes from Taihu Lake (eastern China). This integrated technique allows us to fully identify 20 OPEs, and 9 out of them are emerging OPEs detected in wild fish for the first time. Importantly, some of the emerging OPEs, i.e., tris(2,4-di-tert-butylphenyl) phosphate (TDtBPP), 4-tert-butylphenyl diphenyl phosphate (BPDP), and 2-isopropylphenyl diphenyl phosphate (IPDP), exhibited greater or at least comparable contamination levels as compared to traditional ones. There were no statistically significant interspecies (n = 6) differences regarding OPE concentrations. However, we observed significant differences on OPE concentrations among different tissues of silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix), for which the intestine has the highest OPE mean concentration (46.5 ng/g wet weight (ww)), followed by the liver (20.1 ng/g ww) ≈ brain (20.0 ng/g ww) > gill (14.8 ng/g ww) > muscle (11.4 ng/g ww). An interesting exception is IPDP, which presents an unexpectedly high concentration in the brain (0.510 ng/g ww). Collectively, this study expands our understanding of OPE contamination in wild fish and clearly shows that emerging TDtBPP, IPDP, and BPDP could play an equally important role as traditional OPEs in contribution of OPE pollution in wild fish samples.

[Determination of aflatoxins in cashew by high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry].

A method for the determination of four aflatoxins in cashew using high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) was developed. The sample was extracted with methanol-water (8: 2, v/v) solution, followed by a cleanup procedure with Florisil column. The target compounds were eluted using 5 mL acetone-water-formic acid (96: 3.5:0.5, v/v/v) solution. The eluate was dried under N2, then dissolved in 1 mL methanol. Four aflatoxins were separated in MG C18 column (100 mm x 3.0 mm, 3 microm) adopting a gradient program within 15 min. A triple quadrupole mass spectrometry equipped with an electrospray ionization source operated in the positive ion mode was used to detect the aflatoxins. The good correlation coefficients (r2 > 0.997) of the four aflatoxins were obtained within their respective linear ranges. The limits of detection (S/N = 3) were between 0.009 microg/kg and 0.04 microg/kg, and the limits of quantification (S/N = 10) were between 0.03 microg/kg and 0.12 microg/kg. The recoveries were in a range of 63.0% -78.5% with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) varied from 2.8% to 9.1%. The validation results meet the requirements of trace assay. Matrix effects were estimated and the signal suppression/enhancement ranged from 88.8% to 99.4%. The results indicate that the developed method is simple, fast, accurate, and can be applied for the determination of fours aflatoxins in cashew.