Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon risk assessment and analytical methods using quechers pretreatment for the evaluation of herbal medicine ingredients in korea

Hee Jeong Hwang, Sae Ha Lee, Yong Yeon Kim, Han Seung Shin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are carcinogenic and mutagenic compounds that are often formed during the thermal processing of herbal medicine ingredients. In this study, the concentrations of four PAHs (PAH4) in various herbal medicine ingredients were monitored. Further, the QuEChERS method was used to replace conventional pretreatment, a more complex and cumbersome approach. The recovery range of the QuEChERS method ranged between 89.65–118.59%, and the average detection levels of benzo[a]anthracene (BaA), chrysene (CHR), benzo[b]fluoranthene (BbF), and Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) in 50 herbal medicine ingredients were 0.18, 0.27, 1.13, and 0.17 µg/kg, respectively. The BaP and PAH4 levels in all tested samples were deemed safe according to risk characterization analyses based on European Union and Korean guidelines. Therefore, our findings indicated that the QuEChERS method could be used as an effective alternative to conventional sample pretreatment for the analysis of herbal medicine ingredients.

Original languageEnglish
Article number2200
JournalFoods
Volume10
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2021

Keywords

  • Exposure assessment
  • Herbal medicine
  • Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
  • QuEChERS
  • Risk characterization

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