Stir bar sorptive extraction with EG-Silicone coating for bisphenols determination in personal care products by GC–MS

[Display omitted] ► Ethylene glycol-silicone coated stir bars are used for the preconcentration of bisphenols. ► No derivatization is required for the TD–GC–MS procedure. ► Sensitivity is not as high as could be expected but time and reagents are saved. An easy to perform analytical method for the determination of three bisphenol compounds (BPs) in commonly used personal care products (PCPs) is presented. Ethylene glycol-silicone (EG-Silicone) coated stir bars, which have recently become commercially available, are evaluated in this study for the simultaneous determination of bisphenol A (BPA), bisphenol F (BPF) and bisphenol Z (BPZ) by stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) in combination with thermal desorption–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (TD–GC–MS). This new sorptive extraction phase allows the analysis of these compounds without any previous derivatization procedure. Different parameters affecting both SBSE extraction and thermal desorption were carefully optimized, using experimental designs based on the Taguchi orthogonal arrays. The procedure was applied to analyzing easily bought PCPs, providing detection limits of about 8ngg−1, with precisions lower than 11% in terms of relative standard deviation. Recovery studies performed at two different concentration levels provided satisfactory values for all the compounds. The analyzed personal care samples contained BPA at concentration levels ranging from 30.9 to 88.3ngg−1.