ABSTRACT
The heterocyclic amines found in foods have stable multiple-ring aromatic structures and all have an exocyclic amino group. Many foods and related samples have been analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography and mutagenic activity tested in collected fractions. Now that many of the heterocyclic amine mutagens have been identified and synthesized, and shown to be animal carcinogens, the next research goals are to estimate human exposure by quantifying the amounts present in foods and to some extent in the smoke from cooking. Mutagens can be adsorbed to the blue cotton from saline solutions and eluted with a methanol/ammonia solution. The detection limits of heterocyclic amines purified through solid-phase extraction depend on the food sample investigated. Peak detection has been successful using UV, fluorescence, electrochemical, and mass spectrometric detection and bacterial mutagenicity. Electrochemical detection offers increased detector specificity over UV absorbance detection, although the sensitivities of the two detector types are about the same.
