Abstract
Parabens are widely used as preservatives in thousands of consumer’s products including, cosmetics, pharmaceutical products, and foodstuffs. Concern in regards to the safety of parabens has been raised where parabens have been classified as “Endocrine disrupting compounds” with potential link to many tumor types. Despite their wide spread, the occurrence of parabens in foodstuffs available in the Saudi market has not been studied until now. In this work, an HPLC-PDA method was developed and validated for the screening of parabens’ residues in different categories of Ready-to-eat foodstuffs collected from the Saudi market. These categories include: cereals, meat, fish, dairy product, bean products, fruits, vegetables, cookies and snacks, beverages, condiments, and others. Chromatographic analysis of the selected parabens (Methyl paraben MeP, ethyl paraben EtP, propyl paraben PrP, butyl paraben BuP, and isobutyl paraben isoBuP) was performed on Symmetry® C-18 Colum (4.6 × 75 mm, 3.5 μm) with methanol/water (57:43, v/v) as the mobile phase and using simply methanol for sample preparation. The proposed method was fully validated with regards to linearity, limits of detection (LOD) and of quantitation (LOQ), accuracy and precision, extraction recovery, and specificity. Matrix-based calibration curves were linear in the range 0.025–500 μg/g (MeP, EtP), 0.05–500 μg/g (PrP), and 0.125–1250 μg/g (IsoBuP, BuP) with LOQ 0.025 μg/g for MeP, EtP, 0.05 μg/g for PrP, 0.125 μg/g for both BuP and isoBuP. The method was successfully applied for quantitative screening of the five parabens in different Ready-to-eat foodstuffs (n = 215) collected from the Saudi market. The total parabens content was determined and was related to the food category and to the packaging material. The highest paraben content was found in cereals and condiments. The type of the packaging material did not have a significant effect on the paraben content among all food categories. Moreover, the estimated daily intake of parabens among the Saudi adults was calculated and it was found to have an average of 2000 μg/kgbw/day.