GC/MS Method for the Determination of Adipate Plasticizers in Ham Sausage and Its Application to Kinetic and Penetration Studies

A GC/MS method was developed and successfully validated for the determination of adipate plasticizers in ham sausage migrated from polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) packaging film. The sample pretreatment includes liquid extraction, solvent evaporation, and reconstitution before and after solid phase extraction (SPE). For the 5 adipate plasticizers studied, the SPE process with Oasis MAX cartridge showed an extraction efficiency from 85.7% to 106%, and the calibration curves are all linear in the range of 5 to 1000 ng/g with correlation coefficients greater than 0.998. The method proved to be accurate and precise; the average intraday recovery ranges from 85.4% to 114.6% with a %CV value from 2.5 to 11.3, and the average interday recovery from 83.6% to 118.5% with a %CV value from 2.8 to 15.6, respectively, for the adipate plasticizers. The method is sensitive and was effectively applied in the kinetic and penetration studies of the adipate plasticizers migrating from food-grade PVDC packaging film into ham sausage. The experimental data showed that approximately 6.8% of dibutyl adipate (DBA) in the packaging film migrated into the ham sausage in 4 mo and the migration reached the innermost portion of the sausage in 6 mo.