Assessment of SPME lab-made microfibers for monitoring the presence of phthalate contaminants in honey sample

BOTELLI, BRUNO J.; TOMBESI, NORMA B.; LASSALLE, VERÓNICA L.

Journal of Food Measurement and Characterization

Springer

Año: 2024

2193-4126

AbstractThe contamination with plastics (nano and micro) is a problem of great concern. In the case of food, the presence of plasticsis ascribed to their use as packaging materials which can migrate into diferent foodstufs. A need for more efcient andaccessible detection techniques becomes a great challenge. In this context, Solid-Phase Microextraction (SPME) emerges asa highly efcient tool to assess the determination of analytes, including microplastics, in diferent kinds of matrix comprisingfoods. In this contribution, the design of SPME microfbers is proposed to assess the more efcient detection of phthalates,as model of microplastics, in a sample of honey. SPME microfbers were fabricated using vitreous materials and coatedwith polyethylene glycol (PEG). The characterization of coated microfbers was performed by FTIR SEM, and TGA. Theachieved data confrmed that PEG deposited on the fber, reached a maximum of 13% respect to the total coated fber mass.The performance of developed fbers was evaluated using Gas Chromatography coupled with a Mass Spectrometer detector.The results revealed a better separation between the retention times (r.t) of each phthalate when the lab made fbers wereemployed. In the this case r.t of 23, 33 and 41 min were roughly achieved for detecting diethyl phthalate (DEP), dibutylphthalate (DBP) and bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), respectively. As a diference, when the commercial fber was usedthe retention times were narrower distributed reaching r.t of 30, 33, and 39 min for DEP, DBP and DEHP, respectively inthe same honey’s sample