Electrochemical reduction of azo dyes mimicking their biotransformation to more toxic products
Published Online: Sep 13, 2019
Page range: 433 - 438
Received: Jan 25, 2019
Accepted: Jul 02, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jvetres-2019-0044
Keywords
© 2019 K. Pietruk et al. published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.
Introduction
Some azo dyes, including Sudans I–IV and Para Red, are genotoxic and may be biotransformed to cancerogenic aromatic amines. They are banned as food and feed additives, but their presence has been detected in food. Aromatic amines are also considered potentially toxic. Online EC–MS is a promising tool to study the transformation mechanisms of xenobiotics such as azo dyes. The aim of the study was to investigate emulation of how azo dyes are enzymatically transformed to amines with EC–MS.
Material and Methods
The reduction reactions of five azo dyes (Sudans I–IV and Para Red) were conducted using a glassy carbon working electrode and 0.1% formic acid in acetonitrile. Reduction results were compared with the literature and
Results
A limited number of pre-selected compounds were confirmed as azo dyes metabolites – aniline for Sudan I, aniline and 4-aminoazobenzene for Sudan III,
Conclusions
Electrochemistry–mass spectrometry was successfully applied to azo dyes. This approach may be used to mimic the metabolism of azo dyes, and therefore predict products of biotransformation.