Nuevas aproximaciones para el análisis de contaminantes orgánicos en matrices alimentarias con elevado contenido graso

Abstract

Food safety plays a key role in protecting human health, ensuring safe and sustainable food products. Therefore, the European Union establishes the maximum permitted concentration of contaminants and residues in food commodities, normally at ug kg-1 levels. For that purpose, highly sensitive and selective instrumentation is necessary, such as chromatography coupled mass spectrometry. An ionization source is required to couple both techniques. Nevertheless, the instrumental response of the analytes can be disturbed by the co-eluting compounds in the ionization process. This is called the matrix effect. It can be more pronounced in fatty foods, due to they contain more substances that can be co-extracted with the analyte. With the aim of minimizing the matrix effect in fatty foods, in this doctoral thesis several strategies are proposed: a higher dilution of the obtained extract, the addition of a clean-up step using a specific sorbent or the use of alternative ionization sources.