Determination of Formaldehyde in Cosmetics Using a Convenient DNPH Derivatization Procedure Followed by HPLC Analysis

Abstract

Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA) has officially announced 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine (DNPH) derivatization -high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) methods for analysis of formaldehyde. This study was conducted to develop a convenient derivatization method for cosmetics by improving complex pre-treatment procedures included in KFDA method. To simplify pre-treatment procedures of KFDA method, reaction conditions including pH, time and temperature were optimized. This pre-treatment method does not require complicate pre-treatment steps of KFDA method such as pH adjustment of test solution with acetate buffer (pH 5.0), solvent-solvent partitioning with dichloromethane and concentrating procedure with vacuum evaporator. Formaldehyde-dinitrophenylhydrazone (formaldehyde-DNP) product produced by derivatization reaction was separated and quantified with a reversed-phase HPLC, which was slightly modified with KFDA method. The linearity test showed good results with 0.9999 of correlation coefficient (r 2 ) in the range of 2 ∼ 40 ppm of standard solutions. In this method, limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantitation (LOQ) values for formaldehyde were 0.2 ppm and 0.5 ppm, respectively. In addition, recovery test demonstrated that the method was also accurate and reproducible. Therefore, the proposed method can be applicable to rapid analysis of formaldehyde in cosmetics.