Investigation of Sample Treatment Steps for the Analysis of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Ground Coffee

Abstract

Sample treatment procedures were tested for the determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in ground coffee. Pressurized liquid extraction (PLE), under different conditions, was combined with several cleanup methods, namely in situ purification, C18-silica solid-phase extraction (SPE), silica SPE, acid digestion, and alkaline saponification. Soxhlet extraction and direct alkaline saponification were also tested. Best results were obtained using PLE with hexane/acetone 50:50 (v/v) under 150 degrees C. Alkaline saponification followed by cyclohexane extraction and silica SPE was required to eliminate interferent compounds. Finally, 11 PAHs could be quantified in ground coffee with limits of detection in the range of 0.11-0.18 microg kg(-1). Application to ground Arabica coffee lots from Colombia revealed the presence of several PAHs, giving an overall toxicity equivalence in the range of 0.16-0.87 microg kg(-1). PAH identification was performed using both high-performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry.

Determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in food samples by automated on-line in-tube solid-phase microextraction coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence detection

“…Also, food can become contaminated during thermal treatments that occur in processes of food preparation and manufacture (drying and smoking) and cooking (roasting, baking, and frying) [1][2][3]. PAHs have been detected in various food samples, including tea [4], roasted coffee [5], fruits [6], vegetables [6,7], oils [8][9][10][11][12], milk [13][14][15], smoked cheese [16,17], smoked meat [18], and smoked fish [19][20][21][22], at ng/g concentrations. Food is the major source of exposure to environmental PAHs (>70%) in persons who are nonsmokers and nonoccupationally exposed [22][23][24][25].…”

“…PAHs in food samples have been analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with ultraviolet (UV) [2,4,10] or fluorescence detection (FLD) [2,[5][6][7][8]13,16,19,20,[23][24][25], gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) [9,12,14,15,17,18,21,30], and GC-MS-MS [11,22]. HPLC-FLD methods are sensitive and the most widely used assays, and GC-MS and GC-MS-MS methods are also specific and sensitive, with their use becoming increasingly widespread.…”

“…Most of these methods, however, require sample preparation steps, such as extraction, concentration, and isolation, to enhance the sensitivity and selectivity of their detection. For example, liquid-liquid extraction [8,13,24,25] with several organic solvents, pressurized liquid extraction [5,11,21], gel permeation or open-column chromatography [4,6,18,24], and solid-phase extraction (SPE) [5,7,9,10,16,18,25] have been used as cleanup procedures. Most of these sample preparation techniques are complicated and time consuming, and require large volumes of organic solvents.…”

Hidrocarburos aromáticos policíclicos (HAPs) (I): Toxicidad, exposición de la población y alimentos implicados

“…También se ha detectado la presencia de HAPs en otros alimentos, como el café (Housseou et al, 2006).…”

Selective pressurized liquid extraction of estrogenic compounds in soil and analysis by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry

“…The use of a SPLE technique significantly reduces the need for exhaustive post-clean-up procedures, such as column and/or gel-permeation chromatography, and allows the automation of clean-up steps. In recent years, SPLE has been developed for the analysis of organic pollutants such as polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDDs/Fs) [26,27], polychloronaphthalenes (PCNs) [28,29], PAHs [30][31][32], PCBs [24,25,33], PBDEs [34][35][36] and many other compounds [22,37] present in environmental and food samples. However, to our knowledge, SPLE has never been applied to the determination of estrogenic compounds; furthermore, there is no work concerning the simultaneous extraction and clean-up of steroid estrogens and endocrine-disrupting phenolic compounds (E1, E2, E3, EE2 and BPA, etc.)…”