Determination of Heavy Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH) in Fishery Products

ABSTRACT Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) determination in a food matrix is a topic of interest for routine quality control or screening analyses. For currently available methods, sample preparation is laborious and time-consuming. The determination of PAH in fishery products developed in this paper is based on Conte and Moret's method for vegetable oils. Fat is extracted from 2 g of dehydrated sample, through a chromatographic column using a mixture of pentane:dichloromethane (1:1). The sample is evaporated and redissolved in 10 mL of n-hexane. A 1 mL aliquot is loaded onto a 5 g silica cartridge, then the PAH fraction is eluted with n-hexane: dichloromethane (70:30). After solvent evaporation, the residue is re-dissolved in acetonitrile and injected into an HPLC equipped with a C18 phase reverse column and a spectrofluorometric detector. Tested fishery products show recovery rates ranging between 70 and 125%. Statistical studies demonstrate that PAH recovery is independent of the sample matrix.