A Greener Way to Screen Toothpaste for Diethylene Glycol

Yale Fu, Zhigang Hao, Barry Parker, Michael Knapp

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DOI: 10.4236/ajac.2011.28109                

Abstract

A method developed for the screening of diethylene glycol (DEG) in toothpaste was released by the FDA in 2007. This method could not only quantify the DEG but also confirm if any potential interfering peak is pre- sent. However, disadvantages of this method such as intermittent shortages of the key reagent acetonitrile and the shorter than expected column-life issues have prompted a search for alternative solutions. An im- provement with an alternate “greener” extraction solvent is presented, and the method comparison and vali- dation are described in this article. The greener extraction solvent, ethanol with limited water, provided a better efficiency for the toothpaste sampling procedures. The limit of detection (LOD) and limit of quantita- tion (LOQ) are 0.0025% and 0.0084% in (w/w) unit, respectively. The sample recovery is 101.2%.

Keywords

Greener Way, Diethylene Glycol, DEG, Ethanol, Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, Carryover

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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