Quantitative determination of butylated hydroxyanisole and n-propyl gallate in cosmetics using three-dimensional fluorescence coupled with second-order calibration

This work presents a novel approach for simultaneous determination of butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and propyl gallate (PG) in a very interfering environment by combining the sensitivity of molecular fluorescence and the selectivity of the second-order calibration method. The excitation–emission fluorescence matrix data are processed by applying the second-order calibration method based on the self-weighted alternating normalized residue fitting (SWANRF) algorithm. The limits of detection (LOD) were 1.2–1.3 ng/ml for BHA and 2.2–2.9 ng/ml for PG. The recoveries from spiked cosmetics samples are in the ranges 95.7–103.9% for BHA and 95.9–105.7% for PG. The proposed method avoids preconcentration and elution procedures, so it considerably decreases the analytical time and the experimental expenses. Because the instrument involved in the measurement is nonsophisticated, the experiments could be carried out in routine laboratories. Then it is compared with the HPLC method in dosage of cosmetics and organic reagents, runtime, cost per analysis and LOD.