Isocratic liquid chromatographic determination of three paraben preservatives in hygiene wipes using a reversed phase core-shell narrow-bore column

The first HPLC method for the separation of three paraben preservatives (methyl-, ethyl- and propyl parabens) using a core-shell analytical column is reported in this study. The separation was completed in less than 8 min at a low flow rate of 0.4 mL min⁻¹ and an isocratic mobile phase containing 20% acetonitrile as organic modifier. The backpressure was < 200 bar in all cases, enabling the usage of conventional HPLC equipment. The proposed analytical procedure was validated for linearity (0.5–20 μg L⁻¹), limits of detection (15–43 μg L⁻¹) and quantification (50–142 μg L⁻¹), selectivity, within day (1.3–1.5%) and day-to-day (3.4–4.6%) precision and accuracy. The proposed method has been applied to the determination of the selected paraben preservatives in commercially available hygiene wipes. The mean percent recoveries were found to be in the range of 98.0–98.4%.