Abstract: A gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) method was developed for the determination of 46 plasticizers in food contact polyvinyl chloride (PVC) packaging materials and their migration into food simulants, i.e. water, 3% acetic acid, 10% ethanol and olive oil. Plasticizers in the PVC packaging materials, aqueous food simulants and olive oil food simulants were extracted by the dissolution-precipitation, liquid-liquid extraction and gel permeation chromatography (GPC) approaches, respectively. The extracts were analyzed by GC-MS in selective ion monitoring (SIM) mode and quantified using the external standard method. The calibration curves were linear in the ranges of 0.1~2.0 mg/L with the correlation coefficients of 0.9910~0.9999. The limits of detection were from 0.005 mg/kg to 0.05 mg/kg (S/N=5). The recoveries at 3 spiked levels were 69.51%~107.21% and the relative standard deviations (RSDs, n=6) ranged from 3.53% to 18.95%. These results show that this method is fast, sensitive and accurate for the qualitative and quantitative determination of plasticizers in food contact plastic products and 4 types of food simulants.

Key words: food contact packaging materials, food simulants, migration, plasticizers, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)