Quantification of acrylamide in infant formula via a modified QuEChERS protocol coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry

The accurate quantification of acrylamide within complex infant formulas remain a significant challenge. This study validates a novel method for analyzing acrylamide in infant formula, which combines the quick, easy, cheap, effective, rugged, safe (QuEChERS) pretreatment approach with the isotope dilution HPLC-MS/MS technique. The optimized QuEChERS procedure effectively eliminates co-extracted matrix interferences and achieves high extraction efficiency. Notably, this approach simultaneously accomplishes a recovery rate of 103 % to 105 %, a relative standard deviation of less than 1.6 %, and a limit of quantification at 0.90 μg/kg. The high accuracy of this proposed method is further confirmed using commercially certified reference material (CRM, No. 108–02-006). Importantly, when 20 real samples were analyzed, five were found to be contaminated with acrylamide. These results demonstrate that the proposed method is rapid and reliable for determining acrylamide levels in infant formula, suggesting its potential as a primary detection method for acrylamide in complex matrices.