Fast and effective low-temperature freezing extraction technique to determine organotin compounds in edible vegetable...

Most organotin compounds that have been widely used in food packaging materials and production process show serious toxicity effects to human health. In this study, a simple and low-cost method based on high-performance liquid chromatography with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for the simultaneous determination of four organotins in edible vegetable oil samples was developed. Four organotins including dibutyltin dichloride, tributyltin chloride, diphenyltin dichloride, and triphenyltin chloride were simultaneously extracted with methanol using the low-temperature precipitation process. After being concentrated, the extracts were purified by matrix solid-phase dispersion using graphitized carbon black. The experimental parameters such as extraction solvent and clean-up material were optimized. To evaluate the accuracy of the new method, the recoveries were investigated. In addition, a liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry method was also proposed for comparison. The procedures of extracting and purifying samples for the analysis were simple and easy to perform batch operations, also showed good efficiency with lower relative standard deviation. The limits of detection of the four organotins were 0.28-0.59 μg/L, and the limits of quantification of the four organotins were 0.93-1.8 μg/L, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied to the simultaneous analysis of the four organotins in edible vegetable oil. Some analytes were detected at the level of 2.5-28.8 μg/kg.