Development of a sample preparation method for suspect/non-target screening of toxicants in household chemical products

Abstract

Although household chemical products (HCPs) are chemical mixture most directly exposed to the human body in daily life, the information on ingredients is limited. Untargeted toxicant screening is regarded as a tool to identify chemicals which are not reported to the public database. In this stage, proper sample preparation method are required due to the different formulation of HCPs and diverse polarity of chemicals. Here, we developed sample preparation method based on the formulation types of products for toxicant screening in HCPs, and identified chemicals by LC-MS analysis. Five target HCPs were selected with different types as follows: insecticide for aerosol type, laundry detergent for aqueous liquid type, washing machine cleaner for aqueous solid type, tissue-type fabric softener for dry tissue type and tissue-type sanitizer for wet tissue type. LC-MS was performed for toxicant screening, and the detected chemical features were identified using MS/MS spectral library followed by searching toxicity by compound databases (e.g., Chemspider, CompTox and Pubchem). As a result, aqueous liquid samples including solid and liquid types were prepared in solution form with distilled water. For the non-aqueous samples, extraction using ethanol was most proper solvent for dissolution. Dibutyl phthalate was tentatively identified in washing machine cleaner, and was previously observed that it can cause hormonal imbalances. Also its negative effect on reproduction was reported on human health.