Abstract:

A method for the determination of bisphenol A in paper food containers by ultra performance liquid
chromatography and tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS-MS) after microwave-assisted extraction was developed.
Sample extracts were purification on a Sep-Pak C18 column. The target compound was separated on a Kinetex C18 (2.1 mm ×
100 mm, 2.6 μm) column using methanol-water (containing 0.05% ammonia water) as the mobile phase with gradient
elution, and detected by MS with electrospray ionization (ESI) under a multiple reaction-monitoring mode. In the range of
1.0 to 100.0 μg/L, the calibration curve developed showed good linearity with correlation coefficients (r²) of 0.999 7. The
recoveries for spiked samples were 90.5%–98.6% at three levels of 5, 10 and 50 μg/kg, and the relative standard deviations
were less than 5.6%. The limit of detection was 2.5 μg/kg. The method proved to be easy to use, timesaving, sensitive and
suitable for the determination of bisphenol A residues in food paper containers.

Key words: ultra performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, bisphenol A, microwave-assisted extraction, paper food containers