Investigation of 15 Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in Selected Medicinal Herbs Used as Health Food Additives by Ultra-Performance Liquid Chromatography

A rapid and highly sensitive ultra-performance liquid chromatography–fluorescence detection (UPLC–FLD) method combined with oscillation extraction and solid phase extraction cleanup was developed for the determination of 15 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as the representative pollutants in 8 Chinese medicinal herbs as additive for health food. The PAHs can be baseline separated within 14 min. Calibration curves showed a good linearity for all PAHs (R2 > 0.999), except for naphthalene (Naph, R2 = 0.9957). The quantification limit (LOQ) ranged from 0.07 to 1.65 µg/kg in herb sample. Recoveries were in the range of 80.1–96.3% with RSD of 5.7–10.8%, except for Naph, which is 67.6% with RSD of 6.2% and 68.6% with RSD of 5.8% for spiked level of 10 and 100 µg/kg, respectively. The proposed method was applied for analysis of 8 Chinese medicinal herbs. The levels of total PAHs varied from 28.9 µg/kg in poria to 206.7 µg/kg in pinellia. The highest level was found for Naph in pinellia tuber (140.6 µg/kg) ...