Determination of total extractable organofluorine (EOF) in food contact materials and target and non-target analysis of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances using LC–MS/MS and LC–HRMS simultaneously coupled to ICP-MS

Abstract

Food contact materials (FCMs) from three countries were analysed for all extractable organofluorines (EOFs) from the materials and subsequently by target and non-target analysis for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The EOF varied by two orders of magnitude for FCM from UK and Saudi Arabia ranging between 2.14 and 483 ng cm⁻² (0.2–48 ng g⁻¹) showing that one quarter of all samples were above the Danish regulation for PFAS in FCM. Target PFAS showed high variability in composition and accounted for less than 1% of the EOF. Non-target PFAS screening using HPLC–ICP-MS and coupled simultaneously to HRMS showed the occurrence of organofluorines which were identified by neither LC–MS/MS nor LC–HRMS. This illustrates that the current target PFAS approaches fail to identify EOFs from FCM, which would be a problem with the new EU proposal to ban all PFAS.

Keywords:

• EOF
• mass balance
• per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances
• HR-GFMAS
• fluorine determination
• target analysis
• non-target analysis
• food packaging
• ICP-MS

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Jon Benskin for sending the food contact materials from Sweden.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

T.N. thanks the Commonwealth Education Trust for her PhD scholarship. A.A. would like to thank the Ministry of Education and University of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia for their financial support during the study period. A.A. thanks the Ministry of Education and UMM Al Quraa University for funding her research study. V.M. thanks the Macaulay Development Trust for her PhD stipend.