Rapid Determination of Traces of Benzoapyrene in Natural Tocopherols by High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Fluorescence Detection

A rapid and novel method was developed for the determination of trace amounts of benzoapyrene in natural tocopherol (TP) products by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection. Benzoapyrene was enriched and purified on neutral alumina column,and separated on XDB-C18 column using acetonitrile-water (20+80) as mobile phase. The excitation wavelength is 260 nm,and emission wavelength is 408 nm. The limit of quantification of benzoapyrene was 0.50 ng·g-1.The recoveries found by standard addition were greater than 77.9%. The method was applied to determination benzoapyrene in three different kinds of natural tocopherol products,giving values of RSD′s (n=5) between 3.0% to 10.6%.