Analysis of 13 Banned Colorants in Cosmetics via Liquid Chromatographic and Mass Spectrometric Techniques

Even though synthetic colorants can cause side effects such as allergies and pigmentation, they have not been sufficiently researched. Herein, high-performance liquid chromatography, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, and liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS) were used to detect 13 banned synthetic colorants in cosmetics and characterize their fragmentation. The developed HPLC method was validated following the International Conference on Harmonisation guidelines (specificity, limit of detection, limit of quantification, recovery, linearity, accuracy, and precision) and applied to 120 distributed cosmetic products, one of which was found to contain three illegal synthetic colorants, namely Basic Blue 26 (0.33 mg/g), Basic Red 2 (0.53 mg/g), and Basic Yellow 28 (31.50 mg/g). Additionally, based on their fragment ions obtained using LC-Q-TOF-MS, the fragmentation pattern of synthetic colorants was predicted. Thus, our work paves the way for the reliable detection of illegal synthetic colorants and may help to prevent the distribution of cosmetics containing the same.

Automated summary

High-performance liquid chromatography, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, and liquid chromatography-quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (LC-Q-TOF-MS) were used to detect and characterize banned synthetic colorants in cosmetics. A validated HPLC method was applied to 120 distributed cosmetic products, revealing the presence of three illegal synthetic colorants in one product. The fragmentation pattern of synthetic colorants was predicted based on their fragment ions obtained using LC-Q-TOF-MS.