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.