Determination of formaldehyde in foodstuffs by flow injection spectrophotometry using phloroglucinol as chromogenic agent

A spectrophotometric method for the determination of formaldehyde in foodstuffs was described by using phloroglucinol as the chromogenic agent. The reaction between formaldehyde and phloroglucinol could occur rapidly at room temperature under mild conditions. The spectrophotometric measurements were conducted at 474 nm of an unstable intermediate orange product of the reaction, which greatly increased the sample throughput. Flow injection technique was used to control the merging and reaction timing of the reagents and sample. A detection limit (3σ) of 0.023 μg ml−1 was achieved. The relative standard deviation was 0.29% for the determination of 7 μg ml−1 formaldehyde (n = 11). The proposed method was applied to the analyses of formaldehyde in several preserved foodstuffs and the results were in good agreement with those obtained by a standard method.