Multiresidue analysis of 59 nonallowed substances and other contaminants in cosmetics

A method was developed for the determination of 59 glucocorticoids, sex hormones, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, antibiotics, and other contaminants in cosmetics simultaneously by ultra high performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry. Acetonitrile was used to extract the sample, and the mixed sorbents were dispersed for purification. With the optimal conditions, the optimized pretreatment processes led to no significant interference on analysis from an extremely complicated sample matrix, and the linear ranges of 59 analytes were 0–480.0 μg/kg with the correlation coefficients above 0.99 and the limits of quantification (S/N≥10) were 5–40 μg/kg. Statistical evaluation revealed that the average recoveries were in the range of 61.2–131.2%, and relative standard deviations were in the range of 2.0–22.8%, meanwhile the interday precision ranged from 3.8 to 21.8%. This method is simple, fast, and credible, and it can be applied to simultaneous screening and determination of various classes of substances under investigations illegally presented in cosmetic products, covering a wide diversity of polarities, and pKa values.