Development of easy and efficient methods for quantitative analysis of ethyl carbamate using GC-MS in various fermented foods

Abstract

To develop more efficient quantitative analysis of ethylcarbamate in fermented food, the major disturbance was identified as diethyl succinate on GC-MS through matching with mass fragmentation pattern on mass library and comparison of retention time. And the clean-up method was developed based on the difference of partition coefficient between ethyl carbamate and diethyl succinate. Finally, a washing step was added with 1% dichloromethane in n-hexane on diatomaceous earth cartridge, and successfully applied to remove diethyl succinate from the matrix. The developed method showed acceptable recovery rate (69.5-88.4%) and limit of quantitation (1.0-1.2 ng/mL) on several fermented foods.