Desarrollo de métodos analíticos para el control de filtros UV de naturaleza orgánica en productos cosméticos para la protección solar.

by Chisvert Sanía, Alberto

ABSTRACT Damage to the ozone layer has led to an increment in the solar UV radiation reaching earth, which in turn makes strong protection necessary in order to prevent harmful effects on human health. The use of sunscreen cosmetics could help to prevent or minimize these harmful effects. The analytical control of these products is necessary, since their efficacy and safety must be guaranteed. However, there are no official analytical methods to be used, and thus the development of rapid and accurate analytical methods in order to control sunscreen cosmetics is, without any doubt, of high interest, and this topic is the aim of this Doctoral Thesis. Special attention has been paid in the development of methods that use harmless reagents or with low toxicity, and moreover, by reducing the amount of employed reagents and thus minimizing the volume of waste of products generated, by proposing friendly (or green) analytical methods for both the environment and operator in order to fulfil with the current tendency of the analytical chemistry known as Green Analytical Chemistry. In this sense, different automated methods based on the use of UV/VIS absorption spectroscopy, fluorimetry and chemiluminiscence have been proposed. The automation of the procedures allows increasing the sample throughput. The analytical features of these methods are very suitable for the analytical control of the UV filters in the sunscreen cosmetic products. On the other hand, different methods based on the use of liquid chromatography with UV/VIS detection have been also proposed, which allow the simultaneous determination of the worldwide most used UV filters in few minutes. The analytical features of these methods are also very suitable for monitoring the UV filters in the cosmetic products. Finally, the last chapter of this Doctoral Thesis is focused on the development of an analytical method able to determine one of the most used UV filter in urine samples coming from users of sunscreen cosmetic products, in order to study the excretion and bioaccumulation mechanisms in the human body, and thus providing information on its possible toxicological side-effects.