Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method for trace level analysis of migrated secondary alkanesulfonate from Poly (tetramethylene terephthalate) into food simulants.

Secondary alkanesulfonate has been widely used as an antistatic additive in polymers for producing anti-dust food packaging containers. Currently, no reported method exists for accurate quantification of SAS in ethanolic and acidic food simulants. A new LC-MS/MS method was developed to quantify the migrated amount of secondary alkanesulfonate at trace levels in food simulants from a Poly (tetramethylene terephthalate) containing secondary alkanesulfonate. The Poly (tetramethylene terephthalate) samples loaded with the antistatic additive were exposed to various food simulants. The collected extracts were directly analyzed by LC-MS/MS in ESI negative mode. As the secondary alkanesulfonate is a mixture containing C14 to C17 chain lengths, it was separated on a Poroshell 120 EC-C8 column adopting methanol water gradient program. The migration of secondary alkanesulfonate ranged from 58 ppb to 329 ppb; which is well within the allowed permissible regulatory limits and the adopted method was validated by conducting spiking studies and acceptable recoveries were obtained. The developed method was not only sensitive to detect lower levels of the migrated antistatic additive, but it also avoided more cumbersome sample preparation methodologies like sample enrichment and other derivatization approaches. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.