Evaluation of the Occurrence of Phthalates in Plastic Materials Used in Food Packaging

Phthalates are multifunctional synthetic chemicals found in a wide array of consumer and industrial products, mainly used to improve the mechanical properties plastics, giving them flexibility softness. In European Union, phthalates prohibited at levels greater than 0.1% by weight most food packaging. current study, headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was optimized, through multivariate optimization process, validated evaluate occurrence four common phthalates, di-iso-butyl phthalate (DIBP), butyl-benzyl (BBP), di-n-octyl (DOP), 2,2,4,4-tetrabromodiphenyl (BDE), different The best extraction efficiency achieved using polydimethylsiloxane/divinylbenzene (PDMS/DVB) fiber 80 °C for 30 min. method showed good linearity, precision (RSD < 13%), recoveries (90.2 111%). limit detection (LOD) quantification (LOQ) ranged from 0.03 0.08 µg/L 0.10 0.24 µg/L, respectively. On average, concentration varied largely among assayed DIBP predominant terms (71.4% analyzed simples) (from 3.61 10.7 ?g/L). BBP quantified only one sample BDE detected trace amounts (<LOQ) two samples.