The potential toxicity and persistence of perfluorinated compounds in organisms can lead to diseases such as liver cancer, pancreas cancer, and even testicular cancer in animals. Due to their stable physicochemical properties, perfluorinated compounds are unlikely to degrade in the organisms, resulting in high bioaccumulation.

Perfluorochemicals can enter our foods unwittingly through packaging materials, packaging bags, and food contact materials such as various types of coatings, which pose a serious threat to consumers' health. Therefore, the establishment of analytical techniques and methods for the detection of perfluorinated compounds in food contact materials can effectively control and gradually eliminate the contamination of perfluorinated compounds. It is not only conducive to the development of new analytical techniques, but also to the protection of the consumers’ health. On January 4, 2016, the US FDA banned the use of perfluorinated compounds such as mono (di)perfluoroalkyl phosphate diethanolamine salts, valeric acid-4,4-bis-derivative-diethanolamine compounds and phosphonic acid perfluoroalkyl substitutes in food contact materials in the 21 CFR.

Detection Methods:

The detection techniques of perfluorinated compounds mainly include gas chromatography-mass spectrometry and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, such as high pressure liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and ultrahigh pressure liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry.

Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS):

GC-MS is used to detect perfluorinated compounds in food contact materials. Betula et al. and Lv et al. used different derivatization methods to detect PFOA in coating materials by using GC-MS. It was found that GC-MS is particularly suitable for the detection of PFOA, and the stability and recovery of the method are ideal (the recovery rate is high). Wang et al. established a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method for the determination of ammonium perfluorooctanoate in some food contact materials. The average recovery rate went as high as 95%~104%, and the detection limit was 1.0μg/L. The method comes with a good recovery rate. GC-MS is less affected by matrix effects when used to detect perfluorinated compounds in food contact materials. Hence, the results are more reliable.

Liquid Chromatography-mass Spectrometry (LC-MS):

Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) is currently the most commonly used method for the detection of perfluorinated compounds in food contact materials. It can quantitatively detect perfluorinated compounds in the matrix. Its main advantages are high sensitivity and selectivity, as well as low detection limit, and the sample does not require complex pre-treatment and pre-column derivatization to detect PFOA and PFOS, and LC-MS is more sensitive than GC-MS. Tseng et al. used high pressure liquid chromatography-ion cesium mass spectrometry to measure perfluorinated compounds in food contact materials with a detection limit of 67 ng/L. Comparing with GC-MS, it has lower detection limit, indicating high sensitivity.

Chen et al. reported the detection technique for the detection of PFOS in food packaging materials by UPLC-MS. The method showed that the PFOS was linear in the range of 0.0002~0.1 μg/mL (R²=0.998), and the recovery was 93.8%~101%. Zhang et al. established a method for the determination of PFOA in food paper containers by UPLC-MS by combining accelerated solvent extraction. In this method, PFOA has good linearity (R²=0.9993) in the range of 0.5~50 ng/mL. Their experimental results show that UPLC-MS used to detect perfluorochemicals in food contact materials has many advantages, such as high sensitivity and selectivity, and low detection limit, and the sample does not require complex pretreatment.