There’s Something in What We Eat: An Overview on the Extraction Techniques and Chromatographic Analysis for PFAS Identification in Agri-Food Products

Abstract

Per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFASs) are a group of anthropogenic chemicals used in a range of industrial processes and consumer products. Recently, their ubiquitous presence in the environment as well as their toxicological effects in humans have gained relevant attention. Although the occurrence of PFASs is widely investigated in scientific community, the standardization of analytical method for all matrices still remains an important issue. In this review, we discussed extraction and detection methods in depth to evaluate the best procedures of PFAS identification in terms of analytical parameters (e.g., limits of detection (LODs), limits of quantification (LOQs), recoveries). Extraction approaches based on liquid–liquid extraction (LLE), alkaline digestion, and solid phase extraction (SPE), followed by liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis are the main analytical methods applied in the literature. The results showed detectable recoveries of PFOA and PFOS in meat, milk, vegetables, eggs products (90.6–101.2% and of 89.2–98.4%), and fish (96–108%). Furthermore, the low LOD and LOQ values obtained for meat (0.00592–0.01907 ng g−1; 0.050 ng g−1), milk (0.003–0.009 ng g−1; 0.010–0.027 ng g−1), fruit (0.002–0.009 ng g−1; 0.006–0.024 ng g−1), and fish (0.00369–0.017.33 ng g−1; 0.05 ng g−1) also confirmed the effectiveness of the recent quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, and safe method (QuEChERS) for simple, speedy, and sensitive ultra-trace PFAS analysis.

Keywords

• PFAS
• foods
• toxicologic impact
• human health
• analytical chromatographic methods