Parabens determination in cosmetic and personal care products exploiting a multi-syringe chromatographic (MSC) system and chemiluminescent detection

Abstract

Parabens are widely used in dairy products, such as in cosmetics and personal care products. Thus, in this work a multi-syringe chromatographic (MSC) system is proposed for the first time for the determination of four parabens: methylparaben (MP), ethylparaben (EP), propylparaben (PP) and butylparaben (BP) in cosmetics and personal care products, as a simpler, practical, and low cost alternative to HPLC methods. Separation was achieved using a 5mm-long precolumn of reversed phase C18 and multi-isocratic separation, i.e. using two consecutive mobile phases, 12:88 acetonitrile:water and 28:72 acetonitrile:water. The use of a multi-syringe buret allowed the easy implementation of chemiluminescent (CL) detection after separation. The chemiluminescent detection is based on the reduction of Ce(IV) by p-hydroxybenzoic acid, product of the acid hydrolysis of parabens, to excite rhodamine 6G (Rho 6G) and measure the resulting light emission. Multivariate designs combined with the concepts of multiple response treatments and desirability functions have been employed to simultaneously optimize and evaluate the responses. The optimized method has proved to be sensitive and precise, obtaining limits of detection between 20 and 40 µg L(-1) and RSD <4.9% in all cases. The method was satisfactorily applied to cosmetics and personal care products, obtaining no significant differences at a confidence level of 95% comparing with the HPLC reference method.