Rapid determination of formaldehyde in sanitary paper napkins for product quality control by headspace gas chromatography.

This study reports on a headspace gas chromatographic method (HS-GC) for the determination of formaldehyde in sanitary napkin samples. The method is based on the reaction of formaldehyde and sodium borohydride in a concentrated potassium carbonate solution (824 g/L), in which formaldehyde is quantitatively converted to methanol at 105°C in 45 min. The methanol from the conversion is determined by HS-GC. The repeatability of the method had a relative standard deviation of less than 4.5%; the limit of quantification (LOQ) was 1.17 µg, and the recovery ranged from 96.8 - 106%. The present method is simple, rapid, and accurate. It is suitable for use in the batch testing for product quality control of tissue papers during the manufacturing process and in analysis of point-of-sale samples from commercial markets.