Ultrasonic nebulization extraction assisted dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction followed by gas chromatography for the simultaneous determination of six parabens in cosmetic products.

A simple, rapid, and efficient method of ultrasonic nebulization extraction assisted dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction was developed for the simultaneous determination of six parabens in cosmetic products. The analysis was carried out by gas chromatography. Water was used as the dispersive solvent instead of traditional organic disperser. The experimental factors affecting the extraction yield, such as the extraction solvent and volume, extraction time, dispersive solvent and volume, ionic strength, and centrifuging condition were studied and optimized in detail. The limit of detections for the target analytes were in the range of 2.0–9.5 μg/g. Good linear ranges were obtained with the coefficients ranging from 0.9934 to 0.9969. The proposed method was successfully applied to the analysis of six parabens in 16 cosmetic products. The recoveries of the target analytes in real samples ranged from 81.9 to 108.7%, and the relative standard deviations were <5.3%.