Sensitive spectrophotometric method for the determination of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid in foods

A sensitive spectrophotometric method for the determination of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) in foods is described. The method involves the reaction of EDTA with Fe3+ to produce the EDTA—Fe chelate, followed by the removal of excess of Fe3+ by a chelate extraction technique using chloroform and N-benzoyl-N-phenylhydroxylamine and the formation of a chromophore with 4,7-diphenyl-1, 10-phenanthrolinedisulfonic acid. The calibration graph was linear in the range 0.5–40.0 µg cm–3 of EDTA with a slope of 21.1. The relative standard deviation at 10 µg cm–3 of EDTA was 1.6%(n= 10). There was no interference from most of the common ingredients of commercial foods. More than 90% of EDTA added at two levels was recovered from real samples. The method was applied to the determination of EDTA in various foods, and the results obtained were compared with those given by high-performance liquid chromatography.