Department of Chemistry and Industrial Chemistry, University of Genoa, 16146 Genoa, Italy.
Molecules. 2023 Aug 8;28(16):5937. doi: 10.3390/molecules28165937.
The exploitation of waste and by-products in various applications is becoming a cornerstone of the circular economy. A range of biomasses can be employed to produce food supplements. An example is a particular extract obtained from plant buds (rich in bioactive molecules), which can be easily retrieved from cities' pruning. In order to safely use this material, its possible contamination by organic pollutants needs to be estimated. A green and simple method to detect priority polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in bud samples by head space solid phase microextraction coupled to GC-MS was developed. This strategy, optimized through experimental design and response surface methodology, requires a minimal sample pre-treatment and negligible solvent consumption. The final method was found to be accurate and sensitive for PAHs with mass up to 228 Da. For these analytes, satisfactory figures of merit were achieved, with detection limits in the range 1-4 ng g, good inter-day precision (relative standard deviation in the range 4-11%), and satisfactory accuracy (88-105%), along with specificity guaranteed by the selected ion monitoring detection. The method was applied to bud samples coming from differently polluted areas, thus helping in estimating the safety of their use for the production of food supplements.
各种应用中对废物和副产品的开发利用正成为循环经济的基石。一系列生物质可用于生产食品补充剂。例如，从植物芽中提取的一种特殊提取物（富含生物活性分子），可以很容易地从城市修剪中回收。为了安全使用这种材料，需要估计其可能被有机污染物污染的情况。开发了一种通过顶空固相微萃取与 GC-MS 联用检测芽样品中优先多环芳烃 (PAH) 的绿色简单方法。该策略通过实验设计和响应面方法进行了优化，需要最小的样品预处理和最小的溶剂消耗。最终方法对质量高达 228 Da 的 PAHs 具有准确性和灵敏度。对于这些分析物，达到了令人满意的度量标准，检测限在 1-4 ng g 范围内，日间精密度良好（相对标准偏差在 4-11%范围内），并且准确性令人满意（88-105%），同时通过选择离子监测检测保证了特异性。该方法应用于来自不同污染地区的芽样品，从而有助于评估其用于生产食品补充剂的安全性。
