The role of automation for the reliable determination of MOSH/MOAH

Abstract:
Almost fifteen years ago, the analytics of mineral oil saturated and aromatic hydrocarbons (MOSH/MOAH) found its way into contract laboratories, official authorities, and food producers even though legally binding limits are still not present. Initially developed in Switzerland, this type of analytics spread all over the world in the last decade.
The regulative upper limits aspired by the European Commission will be challenging for a broad variety of matrices. To that end, a lot of harmonization work was done in the last years resulting in a standardized method (ISO 20122) generally providing good inter-laboratory comparability. Nevertheless, proficiency tests still reveal discrepancies near the desired regulative limits.
Beside the hyphenation of HPLC and GC-FID needed for the quantitation of MOSH and MOAH, automation of the highly complex and variable sample preparation protocol can help to improve precision and sample throughput.
As part of the presented work, all needed sample preparation steps are discussed in terms of necessity, performance, and automatability. A generic sample preparation protocol derived from the ISO method is shown and its applicability for a broad range of food matrices.
Finally, examples for unusual findings in foodstuffs will be outlined and how to deal with these limitations and obstacles.