Ultrasound and vortex-assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction of parabens from personal care products and urine followed by high performance liquid chromatography

INTRODUCTION: Parabens, which are p-hydroxybenzoic acid esters, are utilized as preservatives in personal care products, pharmaceuticals and food because of their antimicrobial activity. However, they are also classified as suspected endocrine disruptors and suspected carcinogens. In the present study, it was aimed to optimize an ultrasound and vortex-assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction procedure for simultaneous extraction of methyl, ethyl, isopropyl, propyl, isobutyl and butyl parabens from personal care products and urine.
METHODS: The parameters as extraction solvent type, extraction solvent volume, disperser solvent volume, sodium chloride concentration, ultrasonication time and vortex application time were evaluated to obtain optimum recoveries by vortex-assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction. Parabens were detected by a validated high performance liquid chromatography method with fluorescence detection. The method validation was performed by examining linearity, limit of detection, limit of quantification, accuracy and precision.
RESULTS: Limit of detection and limit of quantification of the high performance liquid chromatography method were between 0.09-0.18 μg/mL and 0.28-0.54 μg/mL, rspectively. Precision was examined as relative standard deviation which was in the range of 0.22-1.81% and 1.12-2.03% for intra- and interday studies. Recovery percentages were higher than 96.00%. Samples of two paraben-free personal care products and a synthetic urine were spiked with the analytes at 0.02 μg/mL and were successfully analyzed by the developed procedure with recovery values higher than 82.00%.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: The proposed procedure provided quantification of selected parabens at 20 ng/mL level in analyzed personal care product and urine matrices with good precision and accuracy.