Determination of nitrofurazone in livestock products and seafoods by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

A sensitive and selective method using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) for the determination of nitrofurazone (NFZ) in swine muscle, swine liver, chicken muscle, chicken liver, egg, eel, yellowtail and shrimp has been developed. The drug was extracted with 0.2% metaphosphoric acid-methanol (6: 4), and the extracts were cleaned up on an Oasis HLB cartridge (200 mg). The extracts were analyzed by LC-MS/MS using electrospray ionizationin the negative ion mode. The LC separation was performed on a Hypersil Gold C18 column (15 cm x 2.1 mm i.d.) with a gradient system of 0.01% formic acid-acetonitrile as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.2 mL/min. The quantitative and confirmatory determination of NFZ was performed by selected reaction monitoring (SRM). The calibration graph for NFZ was rectilinear from 0.2 to 100 ng/mL with SRM. The recoveries of NFZ from samples fortified at 1 and 10 ng/g were 79.6-106.8%, and quantification limit was 0.2 ng/g for the drug. This is well below the detection limit (1 ng/g) set by the Japanese Food Sanitation Law.