Distribution of phthalate esters in Egyptian edible oil

Abstract

Phthalate esters are the most abundant man-made chemical pollutants in the environment. Humans are exposed to these compounds through ingestion, inhalation, and dermal exposure. With reference to the food, Fatty and oily foods are primarily contaminated with phthalates due to their lipophilic character so It has become very insistent to evaluate the risk of phthalates in Egyptian edible oils. Oil samples were simply dissolved in ethyl acetate/n-hexane and eight kinds of phthalates were extracted directly with size exclusion chromatography followed by gas chromatography in combination with mass spectrometry detection (GC-MS) using selected-ion monitoring (SIM).The method detection limits varied from 0.018 mg/kg for DMP to 0.2 mg/ kg for DIDP. The method observed a good repeatability results with relative standard deviation (RSD) less than 10 %. The method reported an excellent accuracy confirmed with proficiency test material and the overall average recovery varied between 86.8% and 95.8% at the three different levels 0.125, 0.5, and 15 mg/kg. The presented survey of phthalates revealed that DEHP is the most distributed phthalates compound in sunflower seed oil and only one sample have been exceeded the European Union SML for DEHP with concentration (1.610 mg/kg) and there is no samples exceeding the overall migration limit (60 mg/kg).