( Chromatography and Mass Spect...)Quantitation of Acrylamide in Food Samples on the Finnigan TSQ Quantum Discovery by LC/APCI-MS/MS

Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry Application Note

Kevin J. McHale, Witold Winnik and Gary Paul
Thermo Electron Corporation, Somerset, NJ, USA

Introduction
Acrylamide has been identified as a potential human carcinogen. This is important not only because acrylamide is a common industrial chemical, but acrylamide was recently discovered to be present at significant levels in food samples,¹ particularly cooked foods high in carbohydrates. This has led many government health agencies around the world to assess the risk of short- and longterm exposure to acrylamide in humans.

One means of investigation is the measurement of acrylamide content in various food samples. This has led to the development of LC/MS/MS methodology for the analysis of acrylamide in foodstuffs.^1-5 While there exists a GC/MS protocol for the analysis of acrylamide, this method requires extensive sample cleanup and chemical derivatization.6 The advantage of LC/MS/MS is that chemical derivatization is not necessary prior to acrylamide analysis.

To date, most LC/MS/MS methods for the assay of acrylamide have utilized an electrospray ionization (ESI) source for the production of acrylamide ions.^1-4 Yet it is well known that ESI-MS is problematic when highly aqueous solutions, such as those required for the reversed-phase LC separation of acrylamide, are used.⁷ On the other hand, water does not pose a problem for the formation of a stable corona discharge used in APCI. One published report has demonstrated that APCI is a viable ion source for the production of acrylamide ions for LC/MS/MS detection.⁵ Furthermore, a study comparing ESI and APCI ion sources for the LC/MS/MS analysis of acrylamide showed that under the same chromatographic conditions, APCI-MS/MS yielded an improved detection limit.⁸

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