Abstract: A method using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) was established for determination of five banned sex hormones in cosmetics.The chromatography column is selected as ACQUITY UPLC^® BEN C₁₈ column (2.1 mm×50 mm,1.7 μm).The mobile phase consists of methanol-0.1% formic acid aqueous solution (60∶40) and the flow rate is 0.4 mL/min.The column temperature is 30 ℃.Sample injection amount is 1 μL.The scanning method is multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) in combination with information dependent acquisition (IDA) and enhanced ion scanning (EPI).Results show that the relation between peak area and mass concentration of the detected four kinds of estrogen,including oestradiol,oestriol,oestrone and stilbestrol as well as progesterone displays good linearity with correlation coefficient higher than 0.999.Detection limit of the method is 1-100 mg/L.The method was carried out at three spiking levels,the average recoveries are in the range of 79.8%-115.3%,with relative standard deviations of 1.43%-11.36% (n=6).

Key words: functional cosmetics, estrogen, ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry, multiple reaction monitoring