Development and validation of an eco-friendly SPE-HPLC-MS method for simultaneous determination of selected parabens and bisphenol A in personal care products: Evaluation of the greenness profile of the developed method

Abstract

Green analytical chemistry (GAC) aims at eliminating the harmful impacts of hazardous chemicals on human health and the environment. Replacing the polluting analytical methodologies with clean ones is of paramount importance. In this study, an eco-friendly fast LC–MS method has been developed for the simultaneous determination of methyl praben, ethyl paraben, propyl paraben, benzyl paraben and bisphenol A in twenty commercial personal care products. GAC principles were applied at all the steps of method development. Sample preparation and clean up was performed with solid-phase extraction on Oasis HLB cartridges and using ethanol as a green eluting solvent. The chromatographic separation was optimized in order to achieve short retention times (6 min) and minimized waste generated (1.8 mL/run) using ethanol as a benign solvent in a gradient elution mode. The method was validated according to International Conference on Harmonization guidelines. Good recoveries were obtained for all analytes ranging from 96% to 103%. The method is robust and all the analytes exhibited high linearity (r² ≥ 0.998). The greenness profile of the presented method was evaluated using National Environmental Methods Index and analytical Eco-scale assessment tools. The developed method is fast, green, robust and offers benefits both environmentally and economically.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Green chromatography
• Parabens
• Personal care products
• LC-MS
• SPE

Acknowledgment

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Deanship of Scientific Research, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Aabia (Grant 2018-047-Pharm).