Determination of Selected Phthalates in Some Commercial Cosmetic Products by HPLC-UV

Abstract

Aim and scope: Due to the serious toxicological risks and their widespread use, quantitative determination of phthalates in cosmetic products have importance for public health. The aim of this study was to develop a validated simple, rapid and reliable high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method for the determination of phthalates which are; dimethyl phthalate (DMP), diethyl phthalate (DEP), benzyl butyl phthalate (BBP), di-n-butyl phthalate (DBP), di(2- ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), in cosmetic products and to investigate these phthalate (PHT) levels in 48 cosmetic products marketing in Sivas, Turkey.

Materials and methods: Separation was achieved by a reverse-phase ACE-5 C18 column (4.6 x 250 mm, 5.0 μm). As the mobile phase, 5 mM KH2PO4 and acetonitrile were used gradiently at 1.5 ml min^-1. All PHT esters were detected at 230 nm and the run time was taking 21 minutes.

Results: This method showed the high sensitivity value the limit of quantification (LOQ) values for which are below 0.64 μg mL^-1 of all phthalates. Method linearity was ≥0.999 (r2). Accuracy and precision values of all phthalates were calculated between (-6.5) and 6.6 (RE%) and ≤6.2 (RSD%), respectively. Average recovery was between 94.8% and 99.6%. Forty-eight samples used for both babies and adults were successfully analyzed by the developed method. Results have shown that, DMP (340.7 μg mL^-1 ±323.7), DEP (1852.1 μg mL^-1 ± 2192.0), and DBP (691.3 μg mL^-1 ± 1378.5) were used highly in nail polish, fragrance and cream products, respectively.

Conclusion: Phthalate esters, which are mostly detected in the content of fragrance, cream and nail polish products and our research in general, are DEP (1852.1 μg mL^-1 ± 2192.0), DBP (691.3 μg mL^-1 ± 1378.5) and DMP (340.7 μg mL^-1 ±323.7), respectively. Phthalates were found in the content of all 48 cosmetic products examined, and the most detected phthalates in general average were DEP (581.7 μg mL^-1 + 1405.2) with a rate of 79.2%. The unexpectedly high phthalate content in the examined cosmetic products revealed a great risk of these products on human health. The developed method is a simple, sensitive, reliable and economical alternative for the determination of phthalates in the content of cosmetic products, it can be used to identify phthalate esters in different products after some modifications.

Keywords: BBP; DBP; DEHP; DEP; DMP; HPLC-UV; Phthalates; cosmetics; method validation.