QuEChERS Method for the Determination of PAH Compounds in Sardinia Sea Urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) Roe, Using Gas Chromatography ITMS-MS Analysis

Evolution and applications of the QuEChERS method

“…Concerning their extraction using the QuEChERS method, most of the published works in the literature have analyzed the 16 PAHs included in the US EPA priority pollutants list [78][79][80][81][82][83][84] while others have determined only some of them [85][86][87][88][89][90], the analysis of PAH metabolites [e.g., monohydroxylated (OH-PAHs)] being less frequent [91]. For OH-PAHs, Knobel et al determined a group of five of them in cattle milk because of their relevance as exposure biomarkers, employing capillary-zone electrophoresis with UV detection for their analysis [91].…”

“…In addition to their lipophilic nature, this wide distribution leads to a higher risk of contamination in food of animal origin. Thus, the type of analyzed matrices in the literature varies a lot and includes different types of meat [78,81,83,85], milk [91], fish [89,90] and seafood [78,79,82,84,86,88]. However, the method has also been applied to PAH analysis in some foods of vegetable origin that may also be contaminated during their drying process with wood burning [80,87].…”

“…Table 4 shows that there are not many variations with respect to the extraction step in the QuEChERS procedure. Few works have applied the reagents employed in the original method [79,82,84,86], using ACN as solvent and MgSO 4 and NaCl as extraction salts and PSA for the clean-up step, though others replaced NaCl by NaOAc in the same ratio [78,81,83,88,90].…”

“…From review of the literature, it is also clear that the sorbent most commonly used for the d-SPE step has been PSA [79,80,82,84,86], in most cases with MgSO 4 , and also in combination with C 18 [78,81,83,85,[88][89][90][91]. However, Sadowska-Rociek et al [87] suggested an interesting alternative that involved adding PSA and SAX (a strong ion exchanger) after the study of several sorbent combinations (PSA, PSA+C 18 , PSA+GCB, PSA+NH 2 ).…”

“…In general, GC [78][79][80][81]83,85,[87][88][89] and LC [82,84] {also in its UHPLC format [82]} have been coupled to an MS detection system, though, for LC, FD was also found appropriate due to its high selectivity and sensitivity [86,90].…”