Determination of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in artisanal cachaca by DI-CF-SPME-GC/MS

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are carcinogenic to humans and can be found in a variety of environments. This paper describes a cold fiber (CF) solid-phase microextraction (SPME) sampling method with gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) to identify 16 PAHs in artisanal cachaca. The method yields good results for some validation parameters. The LOD and LOQ ranged from 0.01 mu g L-1 to 0.08 mu g L-1 and from 0.02 mu g L-1 to 0.22 mu g L-1, respectively. The intra-assay precision shows a coefficient of variation (CV) ranging from 5% to 16%, and the recovery tests varied from 74 +/- 12% to 95 +/- 7%. The proposed method was attractive as this method extracted higher amounts of PAHs in a single extraction procedure compared with conventional approaches. The method was applied to the analyses of PAHs in 29 artisanal cachaca samples collected in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Average PAH concentrations in these samples were in the range of 0.14 +/- 0.06 mu g L-1 fluoranthene to 5.77 +/- 035 mu g L-1 dibenzo[a,h]anthracene. The benzo[a]pyrene equivalent (BaPeq) was calculated to assess the health risks associated with PAR exposure. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to discriminate between different sources of contamination in cachaca. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.