Experimental studies of the natural photoluminescence of melamine in aqueous solutions showed that its fluorescence intensity (at 250/365 nm) was appropriated for analytical purposes. The exploitation of such melamine property provided the basis of development of a new, simple, precise and accurate method based on high performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-Fluo) to determine melamine in kitchen plastic ware following aqueous extraction using a microwave oven. Optimization of analytical parameters such as solvent composition, pH and extraction conditions led to limits of detection and quantification of melamine of 0.0081 and 0.027 μg mL(-1), respectively, with a linear range up to 10 μg mL(-1). Sample extracts fortified with melamine at three concentration levels produced an average recovery of 98±6%, which was in agreement with the results achieved with a reference HPLC-UV method. Different samples of kitchen plastic ware analyzed by the developed and optimized method showed melamine concentrations in the aqueous extract up to 17 µg mL(-1), which corresponded to 86.0 mg kg(-1) in these utensils. The results obtained indicate that the use of kitchen plastic ware made of melamine can contaminate food with this compound after heating in a microwave oven.
Keywords: Fluorescence of natural melamine; HPLC–fluorescence detection; Kitchen melamine plastic ware; Melamine determination.
Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier B.V.