Determination of total extractable organofluorine (EOF) in food contact materials and target and non-target analysis of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances using LC-MS/MS and LC-HRMS simultaneously coupled to ICP-MS

Tengetile Nxumalo; Abdullah Akhdhar; Viktoria Müller; Amnah Al Zbedy; Andrea Raab; Milica Jovanovic; Erich Leitner; Andrew Kindness; Jörg Feldmann

doi:10.1080/19440049.2024.2347491

Determination of total extractable organofluorine (EOF) in food contact materials and target and non-target analysis of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances using LC-MS/MS and LC-HRMS simultaneously coupled to ICP-MS

Food Addit Contam Part A Chem Anal Control Expo Risk Assess. 2024 May 10:1-11. doi: 10.1080/19440049.2024.2347491. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Tengetile Nxumalo¹, Abdullah Akhdhar^{1

2}, Viktoria Müller^{3

4}, Amnah Al Zbedy^{1

5}, Andrea Raab³, Milica Jovanovic⁶, Erich Leitner⁶, Andrew Kindness⁴, Jörg Feldmann^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Trace Element Speciation Laboratory Aberdeen (TESLA), Department of Chemistry, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.
² Chemistry Department, College of Science, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
³ TESLA-Analytical Chemistry, Institute for Chemistry, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
⁴ James-Hutton-Institute, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.
⁵ Chemistry Department, Umm Al-Qura University, Al-Qunfudah University College, Al Qunfudah, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ Institute for Analytical Chemistry and Food Chemistry, TU Graz, Graz, Austria.

PMID: 38728548
DOI: 10.1080/19440049.2024.2347491

Abstract

Food contact materials (FCMs) from three countries were analysed for all extractable organofluorines (EOFs) from the materials and subsequently by target and non-target analysis for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The EOF varied by two orders of magnitude for FCM from UK and Saudi Arabia ranging between 2.14 and 483 ng cm^-2 (0.2-48 ng g^-1) showing that one quarter of all samples were above the Danish regulation for PFAS in FCM. Target PFAS showed high variability in composition and accounted for less than 1% of the EOF. Non-target PFAS screening using HPLC-ICP-MS and coupled simultaneously to HRMS showed the occurrence of organofluorines which were identified by neither LC-MS/MS nor LC-HRMS. This illustrates that the current target PFAS approaches fail to identify EOFs from FCM, which would be a problem with the new EU proposal to ban all PFAS.

Keywords: EOF; HR-GFMAS; ICP-MS; fluorine determination; food packaging; mass balance; non-target analysis; per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances; target analysis.