A tandem ionic liquid-based dispersive microextraction method using in-syringe air-assisted vesicle system for rapid determination of lead and cadmium in artificial sweat extract of facial cosmetic products

In the present study an innovative tandem ionic liquid-based dispersive microextraction method using an in-syringe air-assisted vesicle system was developed to determine the ultra-trace levels of lead (Pb-II) and cadmium (Cd-II) ions in synthetic sweat extract of branded and nonbranded facial cosmetic products. This method is based on injecting 2-amino-3-sulfhydrylpropanoic acid (l-cysteine) (as an eco-friendly chelating agent), hexafluorophosphate ion [PF6-] (as an ion pair agent) and 1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate [HMIM] [PF6] (as an acceptor phase) into the synthetic sweat extract of facial cosmetic products (branded and nonbranded). The acceleration of the dispersion process was carried out by rapid pressure in the syringe through the back-and-forth movement of plunger. The sediment phase was removed following centrifugation, and then hydrophobic complexes of analyte were back-extracted into HNO3 and finally injected into a flame atomic absorption spectrometer. Several factors were systematically optimized. The validity of the methodology was tested by analyzing spiked known standards of both metals in a real sample. The proposed method was applied to the artificial sweat extracts of face makeup products, indicating how much toxic metals from different cosmetics are directly absorbed into skin.