Determination of migrated formaldehyde from kitchenware using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

Abstract

A new GC-MS method is developed for the determination of formaldehyde. Formaldehyde exposure to the food materials may lead to its migration into food. The formaldehyde is reported to be toxic to human health if taken or exposed in higher than recommended quantity. This papers reports analytical method to get the information about the content of the formaldehyde in the kitchenware. Prior to the determination process, simulation study was performed to get the information about the migration of formaldehyde. Method was applied to the real samples for formaldehyde determination. It has been observed that the all the simulated real sample witnessed migration of formaldehyde from the kitchenware. Alongside the validation study was performed too, which suggest that the method is linear in the concentration range of 2.5 to 30 mg l-1. The precision study suggests a % RSD in the range of 0.568-3.77 for all concentration points. The recovery study highlights an excellent recovery of the method which was found in the range of 97.64-99.43%. LOD and LOD of the method was found to be 0.35 and 1 ml l-1, which is equivalent to 0.05 and 0.142 mg l-1 of formaldehyde, respectively.