Bisphenol A (BPA) is a well-known endocrine disruptor, particularly regulated in the food contact materials (FCMs) legislation and recently subjected to a total ban from FCMs production chain (Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/3190).
Since the production of such FCMs often involves processes like painting and coating, any product used for this purpose must be tested to ensure acceptable levels of BPA during the entire production line, since the conformity of contact migration is performed on the final artifact.
Industrial enamels, resins and paints, together with their application solvents, are complex mixtures, which may require different sample-prep procedures according to their composition.
SRA has developed and validated and effective three-axis robotic sample-prep platform able to fully automate the whole workflow, where the unique manual process required is weighing the initial sample aliquot.
The method has been developed and validated on multiple industrial products and semi-finished intermediates in the range 20 µg/kg – 5 mg/kg with the same preparation parameters, permitting a sample throughput of 6 samples/hour in offline preparation and 1.2 samples/hour in online processing with subsequent GC-MS injection.
Spiked samples showed a mean recovery of 103% and a method detection limit of 12 µg/kg was assessed, permitting a reliable tracking of the entire production process.
