PAHs in baby food: assessment of three different processing techniques for the preparation of reference materials

Area of Science:

• Food safety analysis
• Analytical chemistry
• Reference material development

Background:

• Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) are contaminants of concern in food.
• Accurate quantification of PAHs requires reliable reference materials.
• Baby food matrices present unique challenges for reference material production.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the feasibility of producing a matrix reference material for selected PAHs in baby food.
• To evaluate the homogeneity and stability of processed baby food samples spiked with PAHs.
• To validate an analytical method for PAH determination in the candidate reference material.

Main Methods:

• Spiking a commercial baby food with 16 priority PAHs at 1 μg/kg.
• Processing contaminated samples by autoclaving, freezing, or freeze-drying.
• Assessing homogeneity (bottle-to-bottle) and stability (short- and long-term).
• Employing a validated analytical method involving solid-liquid extraction, GPC, SPE, and GC-IDMS.

Main Results:

• All three processing methods (autoclaving, freezing, freeze-drying) yielded sufficiently homogeneous materials.
• Autoclaved material demonstrated the most promising long-term stability.
• Freeze-drying was also suitable for most PAHs, indicating its potential for reference material production.
• The validated analytical method met the requirements for homogeneity and stability studies.

Conclusions:

• A feasible approach for developing a PAH matrix reference material in baby food was demonstrated.
• Autoclaving and freeze-drying are suitable processing techniques for creating stable and homogeneous PAH reference materials in food.
• This work is a significant step towards routine PAH monitoring in processed food samples.