Acetonitrile extraction coupled with UHPLC-MS/MS for the accurate quantification of 17 heterocyclic aromatic amines in meat products

This study proposed a simple and accurate acetonitrile extraction pretreatment method coupled with ultrahigh-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry for the simultaneous determination of 17 heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs) in meat products. With this new method, all 17 HAAs, including 11 polar and 6 nonpolarHAAs, were simultaneously extracted by acetonitrile and purified by one-step Oasis MCX cartridge purification. Compared with two different improved reference methods, the acetonitrile method could obtain higher recoveries (in the range of 42.5% to 99.0%) and better repeatability (lower than 12.2%). The limits of quantification were calculated between 0.028 ng g−1and0.648 ng g−1 with high correlation coefficients (r > 0.9976) in wide linear ranges. The proposed acetonitrile method was successfully applied to the analysis of the HAAs levels in 10 commercial meat products with satisfactory recoveries.