Determination of organophosphorus flame retardants in fish by pressurized liquid extraction using aqueous solutions and solid-phase microextraction coupled with gas chromatography-flame photometric detector

• A new method was proposed for determining PFRs in fish samples.
• The method employed aqueous solutions containing 10% of acetonitrile as solvent.
• The developed method did not need any further clean-up steps.
• The proposed method was effective and sensitive.

A novel method was developed for the determination of organophosphorus flame retardants (PFRs) in fish. The method consists of a combination of pressurized liquid extraction (PLE) using aqueous solutions and solid-phase microextraction (SPME), followed by gas chromatography-flame photometric detector (GC-FPD). The experimental parameters that influenced extraction efficiency were systematically evaluated. The optimal responses were observed by extracting 1 g of fish meat with the solution of water:acetonitrile (90:10, v/v) at 150 °C for 5 min and acid-washed silica gel used as lipid sorbent. The obtained extract was then analyzed by SPME coupled with GC-FPD without any additional clean-up steps. Under the optimal conditions, the proposed procedure showed a wide linear range (0.90–5000 ng g−1) obtained by analyzing the spiked fish samples with increasing concentrations of PFRs and correlation coefficient (R) ranged from 0.9900 to 0.9992. The detection limits (S/N = 3) were in the range of 0.010–0.208 ng g−1 with standard deviations (RSDs) ranging from 2.0% to 9.0%. The intra-day and inter-day variations were less than 9.0% and 7.8%, respectively. The proposed method was successfully applied to the determination of PFRs in real fish samples with recoveries varying from 79.8% to 107.3%. The results demonstrate that the proposed method is highly effective for analyzing PFRs in fish samples.