High-performance liquid chromatographic method for the simultaneous determination of 24 fragrance allergens to study scented products

The European legislation on cosmetic products has recently required the declaration of 26 compounds (24 volatile chemicals and 2 natural extracts) on the label of final products when exceeding a stipulated cut-off level.In this work a rapid reliable and specific RP-HPLC method coupled with diode array detector (DAD) has been developed for the simultaneous determination and quantification of the 24 volatile chemicals: amyl cinnamal, benzyl alcohol, cinnamyl alcohol, citral, eugenol, hydroxy-citronellal, isoeugenol, amylcinnamyl alcohol, benzyl salicylate, cinnamal, coumarin, geraniol, Lyral® (hydroxy-methylpentylcyclohexene carboxaldehyde), anisyl alcohol, benzyl cinnamate, farnesol, Lilial® (2-(4-tert-butylbenzyl)propionaldehyde) linalool, benzyl benzoate, citronellol, hexyl cinnamal, limonene, methylheptin carbonate, alpha-isomethyl ionone (3-methyl-4-(2,6,6-trimethyl-2-cyclohexen-1-yl)-3-buten-2-one). The 24 analytes were appropriately separated over a running time of 40 min, on a C18 column using a simple gradient elution (acetonitrile/water) with flow rate from 0.7 to 1.0 ml/min and UV acquisition at 210, 254 and 280 nm. All calibration curves showed good linearity (r2 > 0.99) within test ranges. The method was successfully applied to the qualitative and quantitative determination of the potential allergens in four commercial scented products, with satisfactory accuracy and precision. The results indicated that this simple and efficient method can be used for quality assessment of complex matrices such us cosmetic scented products.