Innovative method of microwave assisted extraction of MOSH and MOAH in food

Mineral oil hydrocarbons are a growing concern pollutant in food quality control. Microwave-assisted solvent extraction is a well-established sample preparation technique and it offers a reliable, accurate and faster method to perform the saponification in the sample preparation of contaminated food samples. The evaluation of MOSH and MOAH content was performed on different food matrices ranging from cereal products to fish and vegetable oils.

The method accuracy was assessed with recovery tests performed on 4 different bakery foodstuffs plus one fish sample spiked with known amount of printing ink solvent. Blank repetitions were performed to quantify the MOSH and MOAH contamination already present. For pasta and cake two levels of concentration were tested. The results are reported in this Application Report.

The results obtained permit to make the following observations:

• The recoveries study show that the method is efficient in extracting all the contamination present in the sample.
• Results on bakery products demonstrate the general hypothesis that food with higher fat content register higher MOSH and MOAH migration from the package and the material of the package determines the contamination level. As expected, recycled paperboard is generally the worst packaging material due to residual mineral oil from ink and processing oils.
• MOAH presence is registered only in the bakery products packaged in recycled paperboard containers.

Microwave Assisted Saponification (MAS) ensures clear advantages over the traditional methods of extraction such as Soxhlet, sonication or wrist-shaking at room temperature.

Learn more about ETHOS X.

Read customer experiences.