Assessment of baby disposable diapers application for urine collection and determination of phthalate metabolites.

The baby disposable diapers were investigated as a sampling material for urine collection and validated for the evaluation of the exposure of children to xenobiotics. Phthalate metabolites detected in urine samples were chosen as proof-of-concept analytes. For the determination of phthalate metabolites in children's urine samples, high performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS/MS) was used. Two sampling approaches were compared, namely sterile containers and baby disposable diapers. Thirty urine samples from infants and toddlers were analyzed by both methods in parallel and the results were compared. It was found that for diaper sampling, lower concentrations of the metabolites were observed, however, the general distribution for particular metabolites remains the same for both methods. For most of the metabolites high determination coefficients were obtained, namely 0.9929 for MEHHP, 0.9836 for MMP, 0.9796 for MECPP, and 0.9784 for 2-cx-MMHP. For MEOHP the determination correlation coefficient was 0.9154, while for MBP was - 0.7771 and MEHP was - 0.5228. In general, for diaper sampling an underestimation for 2-cx-MMHP and MEOHP was observed, while for MMP diaper-based approach provides overestimation. However, the proposed procedure confirms the possibility of using baby disposable diapers as a material for the collection of urine samples for biomonitoring purposes and fast screening of phthalates exposure.

Assessment of Lipophilicity Indices Derived from Retention Behavior of Antioxidant Compounds in RP-HPLC.

Reverse phase high pressure liquid chromatography was employed in order to evaluate the lipophilicity of antioxidant compounds from different classes, such as phenolic acids, flavanones, flavanols, flavones, anthocyanins, stilbenes, xantonoids, and proanthocyanidins. The retention time of each compound was measured using five different HPLC columns: RP18 (LiChroCART, Purosphere RP-18e), C8 (Zorbax, Eclipse XDBC8), C16-Amide (Discovery RP-Amide C16), CN100 (Saulentechnik, Lichrosphere), and pentafluorophenyl (Phenomenex, Kinetex PFP), and the mobile phase consisted of methanol and water (0.1% formic acid) in different proportions. The measurements were conducted at two different column temperatures, room temperature (22 °C) and, in order to mimic the environment from the human body, 37 °C. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) was used to obtain new lipophilicity indices and holistic lipophilicity charts. Additionally, highly representative depictions of the chromatographic behavior of the investigated compounds and stationary phases at different temperatures were obtained using two new chemometric approaches, namely two-way joining cluster analysis and sum of ranking differences.