Application of solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for the determination of chlorophenols in leather.

This paper proposes a new analytical procedure based on the headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) technique and gas chromatography-selected ion monitoring-mass spectrometry (GC-SIM-MS) for the determination of 16 phenols extracted from leather samples. The optimized conditions for the HS-SPME were obtained through two experimental designs - a two-level fractional factorial design followed by a central composite design - using the commercial SPME fiber polyacrylate 85 μm (PA). The best extraction conditions were as follows: 200 μL of derivatizing agent (acetic anhydride), 20 mL of saturated aqueous NaCl solution and extraction time and temperature of 50 min and 75°C, respectively. All optimized conditions were obtained with fixed leather sample mass (250 mg), vial volume (40 mL) and phosphate buffer pH (12) and concentration (50 mmol/L). Detection limits ranging from 0.03 to 0.20 ng/g, and relative standard deviation (RSD) lower than 10.23% (n=6) for a concentration of 800 ng/g (chlorophenols) and 1325 ng/g (2-phenylphenol) in the splitless mode were obtained. The recovery was studied at three concentration levels by adding different amounts of phenols to the leather sample and excellent recoveries ranging from 90.0 to 107.2% were obtained. The validated method was shown to be suitable for the quantification of phenols in leather samples, as it is simple, relatively fast and sensitive.