Determination of parabens in cosmetic products by supercritical fluid extraction and high-performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

A rapid and simple supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) procedure has been developed for the isolation of paraben preservatives from cosmetic matrices. Method optimization indicates that recovery is affected most by extraction temperature and time. The parabens were assayed by high-performance liquid chromatography after extraction of the cosmetic preparations with supercritical carbon dioxide at 60 °C and at a density of 0.85 g ml^–1. Quantitative recoveries of parabens were obtained with two sequential 7 min extraction steps. Supercritical fluid extraction of cosmetic samples gave better recovery for parabens than conventional liquid extraction techniques within a shorter period of time. Moreover, the automated SFE system used minimized sample manipulation and allowed stand-alone operations. The SFE method is simple to perform, accurate, reproducible and suitable for routine analyses of commercial cosmetic products.