Field-Amplified Sample Injection-Micellar Electrokinetic Chromatography for the Determination of Benzophenones in Food Simulants

Abstract

A field-amplified sample injection-micellar electrokinetic chromatography (FASI-MEKC) method for the determination of 14 benzophenones (BPs) in a food simulant used in migration studies of food packaging materials was developed, allowing almost baseline separation in less than 21 min. The use of a 10 mM sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) solution as sample matrix was mandatory to achieve FASI enhancement of the analyzed BPs. A 21- to 784-fold sensitivity enhancement was achieved with FASI-MEKC, obtaining limits of detection down to 5.1–68.4 µg/L, with acceptable run-to-run precisions (RSD values lower than 22.3%) and accuracy (relative errors lower than 21.0%). Method performance was evaluated by quantifying BPs in the food simulant spiked at 500 µg/L (bellow the established specific migration limit for BP (600 µg/L) by EU legislation). For a 95% confidence level, no statistical differences were observed between found and spiked concentrations (probability at the confidence level, p value, of 0.55), showing that the proposed FASI-MEKC method is suitable for the analysis of BPs in food packaging migration studies at the levels established by EU legislation.