Simultaneous determination of bisphenol A and its analogues in foodstuff using UPLC-MS/MS and assessment of their health risk in adult population

Abstract

Replacing bisphenol A with its analogues may represent a risk to human health because of their potential synergic effects. In this study, a fast, sensitive and reliable UPLC-MS/MS method for the identification and quantification of bisphenol A, bisphenol F, bisphenol S, D8 and pergafast in foodstuff was developed and validated. Sample preparation and clean up were carried out using ultrasonic extraction followed by solid-phase extraction on Oasis HLB cartridges. The developed method was successfully applied for simultaneous determination of the target analytes in 140 food samples from various categories (including: vegetables, dairy products, seafood products, condiments, beverages, oils & fats and others). The recovery ranged from 80.3% to 103.8% with relative standard deviations not higher than 11.5%. Limits of detection were within the range of 0.003–0.015 μg kg−1 under the optimized conditions. Bisphenol A was found in the majority of food samples (83%) with the highest concentration of 110 µg kg−1. Canned food contained higher concentrations of total bisphenols (23.8 µg kg−1) compared to food samples packed in plastic containers (7.68 µg kg−1), paper (3.53 µg kg−1) or glass (1.14 µg kg−1). The estimated daily intake for the detected bisphenols was also calculated (286.7 and 307.8 ng kg−1 BW day−1) for male and female adults, respectively. The dietary exposure to total bisphenols through foodstuffs investigated in this study were found to be higher than the recently updated tolerable daily intake value of BPA (0.04 ng kg−1 BW day−1). Also, the calculated hazard index was found to be higher than 1, indicating that the exposure to the detected bisphenols is more likely to cause risk to consumers through the dietary intake. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report estimating the health risk associated with dietary exposure to bisphenol A and its analogues in Saudi Arabia.