Faculty of Materials Science and Chemistry, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China.
State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China.
Chemosphere. 2022 Jan;286(Pt 1):131593. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2021.131593. Epub 2021 Jul 17.
Skin contact was a significant source of human exposure to parabens during the use of personal care products. In this study, a novel and simple in vitro evaluation method for human skin exposure to parabens was established for the first time. Firstly, magnetic porous carbon (MPC) derived from discarded cigarette butts was prepared as an adsorbent of magnetic solid-phase extraction (MSPE), which provided a fast and efficient sample preparation method with satisfactory extraction performance for parabens in cosmetics and was easy to couple with high performance liquid chromatography. Secondly, the extraction conditions were optimized including the etching ratio of KOH, amount of MPC, extraction time, pH, salt concentration, desorption solvent volume and desorption time. Under the optimized conditions, the limits of detection were between 0.25 and 0.34 ng mL and the spiked recoveries were in the range of 85.8-112.6%. Thirdly, the developed method was successfully employed to determine five typical parabens in real unspiked cosmetic samples, and two parabens were detected at a relatively high level. Then, the developed method was applied to in vitro assays. The absorbable dose of parabens in cream was investigated and in vitro experiments were further designed with agarose-simulated skin to demonstrate the penetration ability of parabens. In conclusion, these results indicated that parabens did have the risk of entering the body through the skin and the exposure was preferably no more than 3 h with skin contact.
皮肤接触是个人护理产品使用过程中人体接触防腐剂的一个重要来源。本研究首次建立了一种新的、简单的体外评估人体皮肤接触防腐剂的方法。首先，以废弃的烟头为原料制备了磁性多孔碳（MPC）作为磁固相萃取（MSPE）的吸附剂，为化妆品中防腐剂的提取提供了一种快速、高效的样品制备方法，具有令人满意的提取性能，且易于与高效液相色谱法相结合。其次，优化了萃取条件，包括 KOH 的刻蚀比、MPC 的用量、萃取时间、pH 值、盐浓度、洗脱溶剂体积和洗脱时间。在优化条件下，检出限在 0.25-0.34ng/mL 之间，加标回收率在 85.8%-112.6%之间。第三，将所建立的方法成功应用于实际未加标化妆品样品中五种典型防腐剂的测定，两种防腐剂的含量处于相对较高的水平。然后，将所建立的方法应用于体外实验。研究了乳膏中防腐剂的可吸收剂量，并进一步设计了琼脂糖模拟皮肤的体外实验，以证明防腐剂的渗透能力。总之，这些结果表明，防腐剂确实有通过皮肤进入人体的风险，皮肤接触时间最好不超过 3 小时。
