Green and accurate analytical method for monitoring atropine in foodstuffs as a contaminant and in pharmaceutical samples.

Nowadays, atropine has been highlighted because of its anticholinergic effect and contamination in foodstuffs, and therefore, using an accurate and sensitive method for its determination is crucial in human health and food safety. In this study, a novel spectrophotometric method was suggested for the swift quantification of atropine. The proposed method was based on the formation of red ion-pair complexes between the drugs and the cyanidin reagent extracted from red cabbage (RC). In this regard, the effect of pH, time, and temperature was explored and optimized. According to the results, atropine determining was shown the best performance in pH 2 at room temperature in 30 min. In addition, this method revealed linear responses from 10 nM to 1 µM of atropine with limit of detection (LOD) value of 0.0019 µM. Also, the selectivity value of this method was investigated in the presence of some drugs with the same structure and some common species as interferences. The results verified no interference in atropine determination, as well as, the results obtained from repeatability (RSD ⁓ 2.56) of this method were acceptable. Moreover, the applicability of this method was tested in buckwheat and atropine sulfate as food and pharmaceutical real sample, respectively. Real sample analysis was carried out with the standard addition method and the recovery percentages (96.54–104.87%) witnessed the high capability of this method in atropine determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]