Determination of Acrylamide Residue in Cosmetics by UHPLC-MS/MS

UHPLC-MS/MS with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization (APCI) and triple quadrupole was applied to the determination of acrylamide residue in cosmetics. Water was used as the solvent to extract acrylamide from the sample, and the extracted solution was purified with a C18 solid phase extraction column and then separated on a Waters Atlantic T3 chromatographic column with a mixture of 0.1% (φ) formic acid and methanol as the mobile phase for gradient elution. APCI and MRM were adopted in MS analysis. Linear relationship was found between the peak area and the mass concentration of acrylamide in the range of 1.0-20.0 μg·L-1, with detection limit (3S/N) of 0.001 mg·kg-1 and the lower limit of determination (10S/N) of 0.01 mg·kg-1. Recovery obtained by standard addition method were in the range of 90.8%-108% and RSD′s (n=6) were less than 7.0%. The method was used to analyze 15 different batches of cosmetics and acrylamide was detected in one sample with the mass fraction of 1.2 mg·kg-1.