Simultaneous determination of 17 phthalate esters in Shengmaiyin by gas chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry

Phthalate esters (PAEs) are commonly used for plastic products as plasticizer. Once taken in by human, PAEs will cause diseases, such as endocrine disorders, cancer, etc. Shengmaiyin is a kind of Chinese medicine oral fluid whose packaging materials may include phthalate esters. If the phthalate esters migrated into the solution, it would lead to serious problem on the safety of drugs. In this study, a method of gas chromatography coupled to triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC-QQQ-MS) was developed for the simultaneous determination of 17 phthalate esters in Shengmaiyin samples. The samples were extracted with n-hexane by liquid-liquid extraction method before analysis. The separation was performed on an HP-5MS capillary column (30 m x 0.25 mm x 0.25 mu m) with temperature programming. The MS/MS detection was performed under electron impact source (EI) in multi-reaction monitoring (MRM) mode. The good linear relationships were obtained in the range of 0.5-20 mg/L for all the target analytes. The average recoveries of the 15 PAEs were in the range of 91.8%-117.2%, except dimethyl phthalate and diethyl phthalate which were about 51. 9% and 77.2%, respectively, and all the RSDs were in the range of 0.5%-5.4% (n = 6). The limits of detection ranged from 0.04 to 16.76 mu g/L. The developed GC-MS method is simple, accurate, sensitive, proprietary, and can be applied in the detection of the phthalate ester residues in Shengmaiyin.