ESTIMATION OF MENTHOL IN PAN MASALA SAMPLES BY A SPECTROPHOTOMETRIC METHOD

Recently, the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act of India has fixed t he level of menthol addition to Pan Masala at 0.1%, therefore good man ufacturing practice (GMP) should be adopted so that the samples no nor exceed 0.1% menthol (1 mg/g). The estimation of menthol in Pan Masala samples involves steam distillation followed by reaction with p-dimet hyl amino benzaldehyde (DMAB) in acidic medium to give a red colour wh ich is read at 550 nm. The sensitivity of this procedure is 75 mu g me nthol per g sample. Using this method, 130 branded and 53 non-branded samples of Pan Masala were analysed for menthol content. Almost 25% of branded samples contained less than 1 mg menthol per g while 75% of s amples contained 1.1-6.5 mg menthol per g Pan Masala. Non-branded Pan Masala contained 1 mg menthol per g in only 7.6% of samples. However, 92% of samples contained 1.1-6.5 mg menthol per g, suggesting that the addition of menthol is relatively higher in non-branded Pan Masala sa mples than in branded ones.