Niacinamide in canned tomato sauce

Extraction and clean-up of contaminants and toxicants from food for mass spectrometric analysis--a literature review

This report presents a review of the literature on the extraction and clean-up procedures used prior to the analysis, by mass spectrometry, of organic contaminants and toxicants in foods and food-related materials. It includes a brief description of the uses of a mass spectrometer and shows how the mode of operation of the machine can influence the amount of clean-up necessary before a sample is presented for analysis. The review covers a variety of contaminants of different compound types in a wide range of foods and not only discusses sample preparation techniques that have been used for contaminant analysis by mass spectrometry but also considers some that could be used. The most commonly used techniques involve solvent extraction followed by a clean-up using liquid-liquid partition or column chromatography or both, although a number of newer methods being evolved are moving towards the ideal of a single-step extraction and clean-up process.