Utility of 4-chloro-7-nitrobenzofurazan for the spectrofluorimetric determination of butylated hydroxyanisole and propyl gallate in foodstuffs.

A spectrofluorimetric method is presented for the determination of 2 synthetic phenolic antioxidants (SPAs), butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), and propyl gallate (PG) in foodstuffs. The proposed method is based on the derivatization of SPAs with 4-chloro-7-nitrobenzofurazan (NBD-Cl) in phosphate buffer of pH 9.0 to yield a highly fluorescent brown product. The optimum experimental conditions have been studied carefully. Linear calibration curves were obtained over the concentration range of 0.20 to 40 μg mL⁻¹ for BHA, and 0.80 to 50 μg mL⁻¹ for PG, using NBD-Cl reagent. The detection limits were 18 ng mL⁻¹ for BHA, 55 ng mL⁻¹ for PG. Intra-day and inter-day relative standard deviations at 3 different concentrations were determined. The high recovery values indicate the accuracy of the proposed methods, and low relative standard deviation values indicate good precision. The results presented in this report show that the applied spectrofluorimetric method is acceptable for the determination of the 2 SPAs in the foodstuffs. Other SPAs, tertiary butyl hydroquinone and butylated hydroxytoluene in foodstuffs do not interfere with the proposed method. In this spectrofluorimetric method, NBD-Cl as a derivation agent is used to detect synthetic phenolic antioxidants. The method specificity has been greatly improved; there was no interference from other commonly used phenolic substances.