Exploration of emerging environmental pollutants 6PPD and 6PPDQ in honey and fish samples

[Display omitted] •Effective methods for 6PPD and 6PPDQ in complex samples were established firstly.•The developed methods were applied to real samples successfully.•The existence of 6PPD and 6PPDQ in fish samples was confirmed for the first time. N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine (6PPD) and N-(1,3-dimethylbutyl)-N′-phenyl-p-phenylenediamine-quinone (6PPDQ) can pose a threat to human health through the food chain because of their ubiquitous presence in the environment and the biotoxicity on organisms. In this work, we developed modified QuEChERS methods coupled with high performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC/MS-MS) to explore whether 6PPD and 6PPDQ are present in fish and honey. The proposed methods showed acceptable limits of quantification (0.00043-0.001 mg/kg), linearity (R2 > 0.99), recovery (73.3%-108.3%), matrix effect (70.4%-95.6%) and repeatability (RSD