Comparative Study of Extracting Fragrance Allergens by GC-MS/MS

Abstract

Products containing any one or more of 26 fragrance allergens likely to cause contact allergies, are required under the 2008 domestic cosmetic law to be labeled when their concentrations exceed a certain range. This study focuses on the comparison and development of analytical methods based on headspace-solid phase micro extraction (HS-SPME) and liquid-liquid extraction (LLE) methods followed by GC-MS/MS for 24 of the fragrance allergens excepting for two natural materials in water samples. Using the developed HS-SPME method, 15 of the 24 fragrance allergens were analyzed and 9 compounds which have relatively low logKOW values (below about 2.5) were not extracted, and the correlation coefficient (r²) of the calibration curve for quantification showed linearity of 0.9969 or more, and the method detection limits (MDL) and the limits of quantification (LOQ) were 0.078 ~ 0.582 μg/L and 0.261 ~ 1.940 μg/L, respectively. In the case of using the optimized LLE method, all 24 fragrance allergens were analyzed, and the correlation coefficient (r²) of the calibration curve for quantification showed linearity of 0.9957 or more, MDL and LOQ were 0.020 ~ 0.138 μg/L and 0.065 ~ 0.440 μg/L, respectively.