Determination of polymer additives in foods and drinks packed with plastic by amino group modified magnetic mesoporous silica microspheres coupled with high performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

The polymer additives may migrate out from polymer plastics into foods and drinks and their potential risk should not be ignored. In this study, amino group modified magnetic mesoporous silica microspheres were prepared by an in situ method. The magnetic microspheres as adsorbent of magnetic solid-phase extraction (MSPE) were coupled with high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) to determine nine kinds of polymer additives including antioxidants and ultraviolet absorbers. An excellent linearity (0.9999 ≥ R² ≥ 0.9994) was at the range of 1.25–1000 ng/mL under optimized conditions. The limits of detection (LODs) and quantification were 0.01–0.09 ng/mL and 0.02–0.30 ng/mL, respectively, for the nine polymer additives, which was lower than those previously reported. This method can be used for the quantitative determination of the migration levels of seven kinds of polymer additives in real foods and drinks packed with plastics.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Amino group modified magnetic mesoporous silica microspheres
• food safety
• high performance liquid chromatography
• magnetic solid-phase extraction
• plastic
• polymer additives

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by financial support from SINOPEC Research and Development Program [Grant No. 217015-6 & 420008-1], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [NSFC, Grant No. 22074004], and Special Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Public Scientific Research Institutes [Grant No. 562019Y-6671].