Determination of brominated vegetable oils in soft drinks by gas liquid chromatography

A method is described for the qualitative and quantitative determination of brominated vegetable oils in soft drinks. The procedure involves treatment of the brominated oils with sodium methoxide followed by GLC analysis of the resulting methyl esters using methyl pentadecanoate as internal standard. Recoveries on known amounts of these oils ranged between 93.7% and 102.4%. The technique, applied to several commercial soft drinks, has shown the content of brominated oil to be in the range 10–45 mg per 10 fluid oz of drink.