Abstract: An effective method for the determination of dimethyl fumarate (DMF) in leather and textiles by gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) was developed. Samples of leather or textiles were extracted with ethyl acetate and concentrated, DMF was separated on a VF-5ms column and analyzed by GC-MS/MS after solid phase extraction (SPE) process. The result shows that this method is sensitive, accurate and reliable. The linear relationship was perfect and the interference with background signal was further eliminated after pretreatment, SPE and GC-MS/MS analytical conditions were optimized. The average recoveries of DMF in leather and textiles at three levels ranged from 84% to 93%, the relative standard deviations (n=6) were lower than 7.2%, the limits of detection in the range from 0.012 to 0.039 mg/kg (S/N=3), the correlation coefficient was 0.9990 over the range 0.05~100 mg/L. It has been applied to routine determination of DMF in leather and textiles with satisfactory results.

Key words: dimethyl fumarate (DMF), leather, solid phase extraction (SPE), textiles , gas chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS)