Sustainable Sample Preparation and Chromatographic Analysis for Reliable Bisphenol Detection in Honey

Over time, bisphenol A (BPA) has been considered as a building block in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins, which are largely employed in nearly every industry, including the food sector. Due to its potential to leach into food and water and, consequently, exert harmful effects on human health (e.g., endocrine disruption), the EU Commission has adopted a ban on BPA in food contact materials. Inevitably, BP analogues have been gradually developed, raising, however, concerns about their potential endocrine-disrupting activity, given their structural similarity to BPA.

A few studies focused on the monitoring of BP analogues in foodstuffs, mainly due to the lack of sensitive and, at the same time, green methods able to determine these analytes at trace levels in the food matrix. Hence, in this study, a method of sample preparation and analysis, based on micro-QuEChERS and ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC–MS/MS), was developed to simultaneously determine BPA and 9 BP analogues in honey.

The optimization of the green method occurred from a standard protocol based on QuEChERS and HPLC-MS/MS, and the Eco-Scale tool was employed for the assessment of its greenness. The method was successfully developed for all target analytes and showed good applicability in the honey matrix due to a good sensitivity (LOD: 0.27–0.47 mg/kg; LOQ: 0.8–1.60 mg/kg), satisfactory recovery (85.9–104.4%) and precision (RSD% < 7.8%) rates, and a negligible matrix effect. According to Eco-Scale, it was an “excellent green analysis”, based on the type of reagents/solvents and instruments used, as well as the occupational hazard and the amount of waste generated in the workflow. The method was finally tested on commercial honeys, and 5 out of 10 BPs, namely BPA, BPS, BPF, BPAP and BPZ, were reliably determined at the concentration order of mg/kg.