Impact of Cooking Methods on the Levels of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Chicken Meat

Abstract:

This study investigated the presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the different cooking methods of chicken. The levels of 16 PAHs compound were determined in raw and cooked chicken meats. The chicken was cooked with different methods, i.e. boiling, frying, barbequing and roasting. The uncooked sample served as the reference. With the aid of the 16 PAHs reference standards, the levels of the PAHs were determined using gas chromatography - flame ionization detector (GC-FID) after extracting with methylene chloride by soxhlet extraction.Column chromatographic clean – up was employed for the PAHs extraction, packed with anhydrous sodium sulphate and silica gel with amixture of pentane and methylene chloride as the eluting solvents.The obtained data showed the total PAHs as 0.0521,01408, 10.8374, 0.2008 and 0.1817 and total carcinogenic PAHs as 0.0516, 0.0933, 7.4868, 0.1343 and 0.0.3610 μg/kg in the control, boiled, fried, barbecued and roasted chicken samples respectively.

Keywords: Carcinogenic PAHs clean – up, cooking methods of chicken, GC – FID,soxhletextraction.