Highly sensitive and selective water-soluble fluorescent probe for the detection of formaldehyde in leather products

Excess formaldehyde (FA) provides a significant threat that causes irreversible damage to both the environment and human health, and long-term FA emission from commercial leather products is a significant problem. Therefore, to help control the FA content, we propose a fluorescence-based method to detect FA selectively using a reaction-based probe FAP-1. Water-soluble FAP-1 was simply synthesized through two steps and the optical properties of FAP-1 towards species relevant to leather making were evaluated. Then a number of genuine leather samples were analyzed to reveal the FA content. Compared with the international standards, the fluorescence method was competitive to the 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) reaction-based HPLC method, and superior to the acetylacetone (ACAC) reaction-based UV–Vis method. As a result of its reliability, low-cost, simple synthesis, ease of operation with reduced measurement time compared with standard methods, our method exhibits great potential for the analysis of FA found in other industrial products.