Determination of Phthalates in Polymer Materials – Comparison of GC/MS and GC/ECD Methods

The paper presents two methods for determination of phthalates in polymer materials. The methods compared were gas chromatography combined with the mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and gas chromatography with electron capture detector (GC/ECD). The GC/ECD technique was chosen for this comparison, because the ECD detector was one of few capable of detecting phthalates. In both cases the same procedure of sample preparation with ultrasonic extraction was applied. Overall recoveries were 76-100 % with relative of standard deviation (R.S.D.) values in the range 0.6-19 %. The values of limit of detection (LOD) for GC/MS method ranged from 3.46 μg mL to 10.10 μg mL, depending on the determined phthalate, while in case of the GC/ECD method they were in the range from 2.97 μg mL to 4.29 μg mL. The methods were applied for determination of: dimethyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate, di-n-butyl phthalate, benzyl butyl phthalate, bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate, diisononyl phthalate, diisoocyl phthalate in polymer material. The seventeen kinds of samples were analyzed. Most of the materials selected for the analyses were made from polyethylene (PE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polystyrene (PS).