Simultaneous analysis of residual 4-alkylphenols in synthetic resin products for drug and food use using head-space gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-GC/MS)

Abstract

Investigation of the amounts of chemical substances excreted into environments is important in the consideration of their influence on humans and other biologics. We performed this study to investigate the excretion levels of 4-alkylphenols, represented by the endocrine disruptors 4-octylphenol and 4-nonylphenol, from chemical products and established a simultaneous analytical method in which 4-alkylphenols were trimethylsilylated and analyzed using head-space gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (HS-GC/MS). This is a simple and innovative method that proceeds to derivatization with a one-step procedure and dissolves the whole sample as well as eliminates impurities interfering with analysis. When this method was applied to synthetic resin products, 4-nonylphenol (detection limit 0.5 μg/ml) was rapidly and simply analyzed with high sensitivity.