Background: Chlorine-based disinfectants are often used to sanitize fruit and vegetables to produce a product called ready-to-eat (RTE) vegetables. During the disinfection process, disinfection byproducts (DBPs), such as trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs), might be formed via chlorination.
Objective: To determine the amounts of DBPs that occur in RTE vegetables in Taiwan, an analytical method which can detect THMs and HAAs simultaneously was developed for this study.
Methods: For HAAs, dimethyl sulfate (DMS) was first added into the sample as derivatization reagent and tetrabutylammonium hydrogen sulfate (TBA-H2SO4) was used as the ion-pairing agent to improve the derivatization process. Afterwards, the solid-phase microextraction (SPME) procedure coupled with gas chromatography with tandem mass spectrometers (GC/MS/MS) was performed to measure the HAAs derivatives and THMs in the sample.
Results: A total of 92 single RTE ingredients were analyzed in this study. Among various THMs and HAAs, the results showed that dibromochloromethane (21%) and dichloroacetic acid (12%) had the highest detection rates, respectively. Compared with fruits, vegetables were more easily to contain DBPs. For adults in Taiwan, the maximum daily exposure of THMs and HAAs estimated via the consumption of RTE vegetables were 28.53 and 77.83 μg, respectively.
Significance: The findings from this study suggest that the exposure of DBPs from RTE vegetables is an important food safety issue in Taiwan.
Keywords: Dietary intake; HAAs; RTE vegetables; Solid phase microextraction; THMs.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc.