Development and validation of a dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction method for the determination of phthalate esters in perfumes using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

Abstract

A simple, rapid, sensitive and eco-friendly method has been developed for the simultaneous determination, preconcentration and extraction of phthalate esters (dimethyl phthalate, diethyl phthalate, dibutyl phthalate, benzyl butyl phthalate and bis(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate) in perfumes using dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME) coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Various factors affecting the DLLME efficiency, including the type and volume of the extracting and dispersing solvents, salt addition and vortex extraction time were optimized. Under optimum conditions, the proposed method provided low detection limits (0.003–0.070 ng mL⁻¹), high extraction recovery (85.6–95.8%), wide linearity range (1.0–1000 ng mL⁻¹) with good regression coefficients (>0.9984) and good precision (RSD% < 4.2%). The optimized method was successfully utilized for the analysis of different branded perfume samples and satisfactory results were obtained.