Determination of furan and furan derivatives in baby food

A Headspace-Solid Phase Microextraction-Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (HS-SPME-GC-MS) method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of furan, 2-methylfuran, 2-ethylfuran, 2-butylfuran, 2-pentylfuran, 2-acetylfuran, furfural and furfuryl alcohol in jarred baby food. The method was specific for the analytes. Good precision was obtained both in terms of intra-day repeatability (RSD ≤ 5.02) and inter-day precision (RSD ≤ 5.55%). The recovery values were between 98.42% and 99.8%. Linearity was established over two order of magnitude, and the achieved LODs and LOQs ranged between 0.018 and 0.035 ng/g and 0.060-0.117 ng/g, respectively, depending on the analyte. Finally, the method was successfully applied to investigate the content of furan and furan derivatives in several commercial baby food samples containing fruit or meat. The results showed that this simple, rapid and solvent free procedure could be used routinely for the analysis of baby food providing competent quantitative data functional to risk assessment.