Determination of fragrance allergens in cosmetics by size-exclusion chromatography followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

A method using size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) combined with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) was developed for the quantitation of 24 restricted allergenic fragrance compounds in Cosmetic samples. To achieve reproducible results fragrance calibration has to be performed with propyl acetate as a solvent containing a constant proportion of matrix components. With the exception of hydroxycitronellal (66 +/- 5%) all compounds showed good recovery rates in the range of 90-120%. The mean accuracy (relative error) was 1 +/- 10% for all 24 compounds in five spiked creams (10 mg/kg per allergen) and 8 +/- 34% in a reference sample (4-15 mg/kg). The biggest benefit compared to other methods is the flexible clean up with SEC which allows the determination of a large range of compounds in difficult matrices with GC-MS. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.