Rapid Determination of 10 Parabens in Spices by High Performance Liquid Chromatography- Mass Spectrometry

摘要

An ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-ESI-MS/MS) method was developed for determination of ten parabens (methyl-, ethyl-, propyl-, isopropyl-, butyl-, isobutyl-, amyl-, isoamyl-, hexyl-, and heptyl-parabens) in spices. After simple preparation, the extract was injected directly into the UHPLC-MS/MS system. Parabens were separated on an Acquity UPLC BEH C18 column using gradient elution programming and detected by the tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer operating in a negative-ion electrospray-ionization (-ESI) mode. The total run time of liquid chromatography was 13 min. Linear calibration curves of 10 parabens were obtained in the range of 0.10-20.00 ng/mL under optimum conditions (r > 0.9990). The limits of detection (LOD) and the limits of quantification (LOQ) were in the range between 0.01-0.08 ng/g and 0.03-0.20 ng/g, respectively. Intra-day precision and inter-day precision were 1.04%-2.13% and 1.03%-3.16%, respectively. Recoveries were between 89.41% and 99.30%. This proposed method was successfully applied in 11 kinds of spices (38 brands). In these samples, combinations of parabens appeared more frequently than we anticipated, and 63.16% of them contained more than one paraben. As a result, it was necessary to simultaneously test for 10 parabens in spices.