The Determination of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Toasted, Fried, and Roasted Malaysian Food by High Performance Liquid Chromatography-Diode Array Detector (HPLC-DAD)

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are wide-spread yet persistent environmental pollutants, and some of these compounds are proven to be carcinogenic to humans. With multiple available pathways, PAHs can enter a human body with ease and accumulates in there. Ingestion is the most prominent ways of PAHs exposure to humans, and due to this, a fast and reliable way of determining the PAHs level in foods are heavily required. The objective of this project is to validate as well as to develop a method for the determination of PAHs in food. In this project, eleven types of PAHs were analysed, and they are: benzo[a]anthracene (BaA), chrysene (CHR), benzo[b]fluoranthene (BbF), benzo[k]fluoranthene (BkF), benzo[a]pyrene (BaP), anthracene (ANT), fluoranthene (FLT), pyrene (PYR), fluorine (FLR), phenanthrene (PHE) and benzo[ghi]perylene (BghiP). Validation parameters that were evaluated includes: linearity (R2>0.99), limits of detection of 0.03 to 0.06μg/kg and limits of quantification of 0.09 to 0.20μg/kg, selectivity, recovery (85.33% to 127.42 %), and precision (that was found out to be less than 10% RSD), the proposed method was found out to be reliable for the analysis of PAHs in food samples. Low molecular weight PAHs were found in all the food samples, while heavy PAHs were found in minority of the food samples. The PAHs that commonly occurs despite their concentration are in the order of anthracene, phenanthrene, and flouranthene while benzo[k]fluoranthene, benzo[b]fluoranthene, and benzo[a]pyrene only appear twice in all the food samples. The mean concentrations of heavy and toxic BaP in roasted chicken samples 2 and 4 are found out to be having 52.20 μg/kg and 80.89 μg/kg respectively, and this concentration exceeds the maximum allowable concentration for BaP at 5 μg/kg. Keywords: Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PAHS, HPLC-DAD, Malaysian foods, Roasted, Toasted, Fried