FOOD CONTAMINATION WITH MINERAL OILS DETERMINED BY GC×GC-TOFMS/FID

Mineral oil hydrocarbons (MOHs) derives from crude petroleum through distillation processes and various
refining steps. It contains saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH) and aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH). MOHs
as food contaminant has received attention due to its possible negative effects on human health [1], as
stressed in the Opinion published in 2012 by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) (Panel on
Contaminants in the Food Chain), pinpointing particularly towards MOAH with three or more, non- or
simple alkylated aromatic rings as the main potential concern” [2]. The routine analytical method to
determine the amount of MOHs in food uses hyphenated high-performance liquid chromatography - gas
chromatography with a flame ionization detector (HPLC-GC/FID) [3]. A disadvantage of this method is
that it gives no conclusive information about the type of substances present in the contamination and
does not enable the separation of either different MOAH sub-classes or MOSH from MOSH- Analogs.
Comprehensive two-dimensional GC combined with time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GC×GC-TOFMS)
allows a separation of the different sub-classes, nevertheless the MS cannot provide any quantitative
information. Therefore, parallel detection in combination with an FID detector, has been developed for the
characterization and quantification of MOHs in food. However, to be able to translate the information
acquired by the TOFMS detector to the quantification process in FID, a fine tune of the chromatographic
conditions is needed in order to obtain comparable 2D plots to compensate the different outlet pressure
(vacuum for MS and atmospheric pressure for FID).
At the same time, a suitable software for quantification of selected regions in the FID
contour plot is being developed, showing promising preliminary results [4].
References:
[1] Hochegger A. & Moret S., Geurts L., Gude T., Leitner E., Mertens B., O’Hagan S.,Poças F., Simat J. T. and
Purcaro G., Mineral Oil Risk Assessment: Knowledge Gaps and Roadmap. Outcome of a multi-stakeholders
workshop, Trends Food Sci & Technol, 113, 2021, 151-166 [2] European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), 2012,
Scientific Opinion on Mineral Oil Hydrocarbons in Food, EFSA Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (CONTAM),
EFSA Journal 10(6), 2704 [3] Biedermann M, Grob K, 2012, On-line coupled high performance liquid
chromatography–gas chromatography for the analysis of contamination by mineral oil. Part 1: Method of analysis,
Journal of Chromatography A, Volume 1255, 2012, Pages 56-75. [4] Bauwens G. Pantò S., Purcaro G., MOSH and
MOAH quantification: mono- and two-dimensional approaches Journal of Chromatography A, 2021, 1643, 462044