Preservatives level (benzoic acid) in selected fruit juices and its potential health risk at Puncak Alam, Kuala Selangor / Aisyah Hani Mohd Azami

Benzoic acid is one of the most commonly used food preservatives. In Malaysia, benzoic acid and its salts are permitted food additives by Malaysia legislation, Food Regulation 1985 in processing in restrictive amounts, but their content must be declared and must not exceed the established limits by legislation. The level of benzoic acid in different brands of fruit juices available on the markets, stores and grocery shop in Puncak Alam, Kuala Selangor were determined by high performance liquid chromatography with a UV detector. Chromatographic separation was achieved with Zorbax SB-C18 4.6 x 250mm 5-Micron column. The mobile phase used was methanol-acetate buffer (pH 4.4) (35:65, v/v), and 1.5 mL/min as the flow rate for the benzoic acid determination. The concentrations of benzoic acid in all the samples (fruit juices) were calculated by external standard method with a calibration of correlation coefficient of 0.9980 and 0.9933 respectively from the standards calibration curves. The range of concentrations was from 212.9 mg/L to 478.9 mg/L. Fifty (50) different brands of fruit juices were analysed. Sample 4B had high concentrations of benzoic acid whereas Sample 9B had lowest concentration of benzoic acid. The estimated daily intake of benzoic acid for fruit juices for children age range from 4 to 12 years old was between 1.5 mg/L to 3.4 mg/L which were within the range of the acceptable daily intake (ADI) of benzoic acid (0-5 mg/L of body weight). Twenty one (21) of the samples contained levels ofbenzoic acid above the 350 mg/L which is the limit specified in Food Regulation 1985. The limit of detection and quantification for benzoic acid analysis was 0.03 mg/L and 0.10 mg/L.