Phthalate monitoring in food stuffs is of great interest to monitor for regulated phthalates that could leach into food commodities from packaging and food processing. The inherent abundance of phthalates in the environment presents analytical challenges due to the high risk for sample contamination ranging from the equipment used for sample preparation to high risk for carryover. Ambient ionization permits ionization of samples with little to no sample preparation, which presents the means to directly ionize samples including packaging, as well as the food commodity itself. The Direct Analysis in Real Time (DART) ambient ionization technique coupled with tandem mass spectrometry offers the ability to rapidly fingerprint phthalates in food packaging and screening for phthalates in food matrices. Characteristic MS/MS fragment patterns in combination with the rapid DART ionization technique coupled with the high scan speed of the latest ion trap mass spectrometer enables a very high throughput analytical method.

Food packaging: Strategies for rapid phthalate screening in real time by ambient ionization tandem mass spectrometry

245th National Meeting (2013)

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