A Rapid and Simple Gas Chromatographic Method for Direct Determination of Safrole in Soft Drinks

Abstract

A simple and rapid method was developed to determine the safrole and isosafrole in soft drink using a megapore semi-polar column (CP-SIL 8CB, 30 m × 0.53 mm, 1.5 μm) with direct injection gas chromatography. Direct quantitative analysis of safrole and isosafrole in soft drinks was carried out without any sample pretreatment procedure. The water soluble compound 1,4-dihydroxybenzene (DHB) was used as the internal standard. The detection limit for safrole and isosafrole was 0.25 μ/mL. A recovery study was performed using one of the soft drinks by spiking 1 mL with safrole and isosafrole at 5.0 and 10.0 μg, respectively. The recovery was found in the range of 98-108% with coefficients of variation being less than 8.7%. Twenty-five commercial soft drinks were analyzed by the current method, and results indicated that 20 out of 25 soft drink samples contained safrole andlor isosafrole, and the amount of safrole was 3-5 fold over the regulated amount, 1 μ/mL.