Determination of 18 Phthalates in Tipping Paper of Cigarette with Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry

A method for determining 18 phthalate compounds in tipping paper was developed with liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The samples were ultrasonically extracted with ethanol after soaking with water. Then the extract was analyzed with LC-MS/MS after passing through of an organic phase membrane filter of 0.22 μm. The results showed that:1) The targeted phthalate compounds could be well separated in 9 minutes with gradient elution by using methanol and 5 mmol/L ammonium acetate in acetic acid-water solution (1:1000, V/V) as the mobile phase at a flow rate of 0.4 mL/min. Multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mode was adopted for qualitative and quantitative analyses. This method was reliable with the linear range of 1-500 ng/mL and the qualitative detection limit of 0.01-1.85 mg/kg ( S/N=3). 2) With the recovery of 82.8%-111.6% and the relative standard deviation (RSD) of less than 10%, this method featured good reproducibility.