Determination of seven synthetic colourants in pharmaceutics, foods, and beverages by a validated HPLC-PDA method: A risk assessment study

A simple, rapid, sensitive and reliable high-performance liquid chromatography method based-on ultraviolet determination was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of the tartrazine-TR, sunset yellow-SY, ponceau-4R P4R, allura red-AR, patent blue-PBV, brilliant blue-BB, erythrosine B-EB. The limit of detections were found as <= 0.083 mu g/mL, determination coefficiencies were found as >= 0.999 in the range of 0.5 - 20 mu g/mL for all colourants. Precision was <= 6.75 (RSD) and accuracy was between (-6.52) and 6.80 (RE%). This developed analytical method was successfully used to quantitatively detect the presence of these synthetic colourants in confectionery (n = 13), beverages (n = 12) and pharmaceutical products (n = 13) and a risk assessment was made based on the lowest exposure scenario. The risk index values determined in confectionery range between 0.10 and 5.78 (1.46 +/- 1.52, mean +/- SD), in beverages range between 0.001 and 2.79 (0.034 +/- 0.082The risk index of five of the monitored confectionery samples (38.50 %) was determined to be above one in terms of the relevant food dyes.