determination of sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate in “doogh” samples in post market surveillance in iran 2012

sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate are two major chemical preservatives which are used in doogh (iranian traditional dairy drink). in this study, a total of 27 commercial brands of highly consumed of doogh samples were analyzed. the means and standard deviation for concentration of these preservatives based on hplc results for analysis of benzoate and sorbate were 195·9 (sd 1·8) and 328·8 (sd 2·1) mg.kg -1 respectively. the minimum and maximum of benzoate content in various brands were 18.3 and 2345.1 mg.kg -1 and for sorbate were not detected and 4961.3 mg.kg -1 respectively. the study revealed that there was not significant difference in preservative concentration in the samples that belonged to various dates. however, a few samples had a high preservative concentration, which could be a risk factor for human health, especially when their intake was being occurred by various foodstuffs simultaneously.