Determination of nitrate and nitrite in cured meats using high performance liquid chromatography

Several existing chromatographic techniques for the determination of nitrate and nitrite were evaluated and found to be unsuitable for the analysis of cured meats because of interferences present in these samples. An alternative procedure was developed, based on the use of a low capacity anion-exchange column with chloromethanesulphonate as eluent, and using ultraviolet absorbance at 210‚Äö-214 nm as the detection method. This analytical method was shown to be rapid, sensitive and precise, and satisfactory recovery was observed when nitrate and nitrite were added to several food samples. A comparison of this method with a conventional spectrophotometric method showed poor agreement between the two techniques and is attributed to deficiencies in the spectrophotometric method. The proposed chromatographic procedure is shown to be applicable to the analysis of vegetables and cheese as well as cured meats.