Development of Paper Based Biosensor for Formaldehyde Detection in Food Samples

Abstract

The abuse of formaldehyde as food preservative can cause toxicities in human body such as abdominal pain with vomiting, central nervous system depression and blood stream failure. The availability of formaldehyde in food & clinical samples can be determined conventionally by gas chromatography, high performance liquid chromatography and spectrophotometer. The disadvantage of the standard methods are less practical, expensive and require an analytical expert. In this regards, the development of new method with simple, easy and low-cost for formaldehyde analysis is important. In the present study, the biosensor was fabricated based on alcohol oxidase and tetrametylbenzidine on the patterned paper by screen printing technology. The presence of formaldehyde can be detected via the color change from pale blue into deep blue, which can be used for quantitative measurements using flatbed scanner. The pixel colors were calculated using ImageJ software and it can be found that 10 serials of standard formaldehyde solution (0.5-5.0 ppm) were linear with their blue pixel (r = 0.995). The biosensor has limit of detection and limit of quantification toward formaldehyde were 0.143 and 0.477 ppm respectively. The biosensor was applied on the noodle and meatball samples in Jember’s local market. The biosensors show good reproducibility (RSD < 1%) on formaldehyde detection in sample simulation and real food samples (n=3). The formaldehyde detection was not interfered by sugar and salt at 1:10 ratio respectively.