A versatile splitless injection GC-FID method for the determination of mineral oil paraffins in vegetable oils and dried fruit

A splitless injection GC-FID method for determining mineral paraffins in food was set up. The method has been developed on vegetable oils and subsequently adjusted and applied to dried fruits, a food matrix not yet investigated from this point of view. The method avoids the saponification step foreseeing only a clean-up on silica gel SPE, and allows the quantification of mineral paraffins with a limit of quantification (LOQ) of 15 mg kg-1 and a detection limit (LOD) of 5 mg kg-1 in the oils. LOQ and LOD for the analysis of dried fruit samples are respectively 1.0 and 0.3 mg kg-1. Eighteen samples of dried fruit were analysed (apricots, plums, raisins, coconut, dates, mango, pineapple). Two samples of apricots showed high values of contamination, 23.0 and 28.2 mg kg-1 of mineral paraffins, while all the other samples contained less than 6.4 mg kg-1 of mineral paraffins and in four samples mineral paraffins were undetectable.