Determination and confirmation of isopropyl p-toluenesulfonate in cosmetics by HPLC-diode array detector method and GC-MS.

Isopropyl p-toluenesulfonate (IPTS) is a potentially genotoxic by-product formed during the esterification of palm oil-based palmitic and palm kernel oil-based myristic acid with isopropanol to produce isopropyl palmitate or isopropyl myristate. There are no methods described for the analysis of IPTS in cosmetic products. In this work, we have established a simple, precise and accurate method to determine the presence and level of IPTS in various finished cosmetic products which contain palm-based esters in their formulations. An Agilent 1200 series high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) unit using a diode-array detector (DAD) has been employed and optimized to detect IPTS in cosmetic products. For the separation, a reverse-phase Hypersil Gold C8 column (5 μm, 4.6 mm i.d. 250 mm) 5 mM tetrabutylammonium phosphate buffer 50 : 50, (v/v) solution in acetonitrile as mobile phase, in isocratic mode and a flow rate of 0.8 mL min Recoveries of IPTS from cosmetic matrices such as a lotion, cleansing milk and a cream ranged from 94.0% to 101.1% with <5% relative standard deviation (%RSD) showing good accuracy and repeatability of the method. The six-point calibration curves (determined over the range 0.5-50 μg mL The validation data indicated that this method was suitable for the quantitative analysis of IPTS in commercial cosmetics. This method is applicable for analyses of trace levels of IPTS in cosmetics and has the advantage of using only simple sample preparation steps.