Abstract
The illicit burn practices on farms promote food contamination that is harmful and must be controlled by improved analytical methods. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which have high toxic and carcinogenic potential, can contaminate foods, mainly through fire exposure. Considering the toxicity of PAHs, development of sensitive, simple, and solvent-free methods to analyze PAHs in foods is necessary. This work presents the development of a new method to analyze PAHs in eggs using cold fiber-solid-phase microextraction (CF-SPME) and gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Parameters of temperature extraction, ultrasonic agitation time, sample mass, and modifiers were evaluated to obtain the best CF-SPME conditions. The new method uses a minimal amount of solvent and showed good linearity in the range of 0.0005 to 5.60 μg/g. Detection limits were from 0.0002 to 0.046 μg/g, and quantification limits were from 0.0005 to 0.152 μg/g. The method was applied to PAHs analysis of chicken egg samples from a farm near a site of an uncontrolled tire fire. The concentrations of PAHs in this study ranged from 0.926 to 1.668 μg/g. All PAHs were detected in the samples. The total toxicity was estimated by benzo(a)pyrene equivalent (BaPeq) and did not decrease significantly in the period (6 weeks) of sample collection.
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We express our thanks to the financial support of the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), and Ministério da Saúde do Brasil.
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Conceptualization: Rosimeire Resende dos Santos
Methodology: Vitor Vaz de Melo Antipoff
Investigation: Daniella Vasconcellos Augusti
Writing-review and editing: Helvécio Costa Menezes
Funding acquisition: Zenilda de Lourdes Cardeal
Resources: Zenilda de Lourdes Cardeal
Supervision: Helvécio Costa Menezes
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Vitor Vaz de Melo Antipoff declares that he has no conflict of interest. Rosimeire Resende dos Santos declares that she has no conflict of interest. Daniella Vasconcellos Augusti declares that she has no conflict of interest. Zenilda de Lourdes Cardeal declares that she has no conflict of interest. Helvécio Costa Menezes declares that he has no conflict of interest.
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de Melo Antipoff, V.V., dos Santos, R.R., Augusti, D.V. et al. Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Eggs Exposed to Fire Using a Simple and Efficient Method. Food Anal. Methods 14, 1194–1201 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-021-01971-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12161-021-01971-z