Abstract: A pre-column derivatization-high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method was established for the determination of chloroacetaldehyde and glutaral in cosmetics.The samples were extracted with 50% acetonitrile solution (in volume ratio),derivatized with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine,separated by RRHD C₁₈ column (2.1 mm×50 mm,1.7 μm) and detected by HPLC-diode array detector.The retention time and UV absorption spectra were adopted for qualitative and an external standard method was used to quantify.Under the optimal conditions,the results show that chloroacetaldehyde and glutaral have good linear relationship in the range of 0.05-5.0 mg/L with the correlation coefficients greater than 0.999 4.The detection limit and quantification limit of the method are 1.0 and 3.0 mg/kg,respectively.The recoveries of spiked samples are ranged from 89.5% to 106.1% and the relative standard deviations (RSDs,n=6) are between 1.9% and 6.6%.The method is suitable for the determination of chloroacetaldehyde and glutaral in cosmetics.

Key words: cosmetics, high performance liquid chromatography, chloroacetaldehyde, glutaral