Characterisation of leather candidate certified reference materials for their mass fractions of aromatic amines

Three batches of leather samples were coloured with nine azo dyes that can yield eight proven or suspected carcinogenic aromatic amines under reduction conditions. The samples were milled to grains and bottled in jars. A group of five laboratories has established the mass fraction of the amines in a ring test using different analytical methods. The methods included a reduction step in order to cleave the azo dyes into the aromatic amines. Quantification was by standard addition: sub-samples of the leathers were spiked with known amounts of azo dyes of known purity. It was possible to establish the mass fractions of six of the eight aromatic amines in three of the leather samples. © 2006 Springer-Verlag.