Quantification of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in tea and coffee samples of Mumbai City (India) by high performance liquid chromatography.

This paper describes a method for quantification of sixteen polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in tea and coffee samples of Mumbai City with the help of reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography with UV-VIS detector. This method is based on liquid-liquid extraction followed by clean up with C-18 cartridge. Concentration of total PAHs in different brands of tea and coffee samples varied from 18.79 to 31.37 microg/L and from 16.47 to 18.24 microg/L, respectively. Mean concentration of total PAHs was 27.56 microg/L in tea and 17.20 microg/L in coffee. Recoveries at different concentration levels were higher than 68% in samples of tea and coffee. Detection limit was found to be low (0.0006 ng) for anthracene and highest (0.174 ng) for naphthalene with relative standard deviation between 0.4%-7%.