Simultaneous determination of chlorinated bacteriostats in cosmetic and pharmaceutical products.

A high-performance liquid chromatography method has been developed for simultaneous determination of triclosan (2,4,4'-trichloro-2'-hydroxydiphenyl ether) and triclocarban (3,4,4'-trichlorocarbanilide) in cosmetic and pharmaceutical products. The two compounds could be separated on a Nucleosil C(18) column and eluted with acetonitrile and water (70:30, v/v) as the mobile phase and detected with a differential refractive index detector. The retention times of triclosan and triclocarban were 5.81 and 2.99 min, respectively. The results obtained were in good agreement with those obtained by a differential pulse voltammetric method.