A new approach for the determination of sunscreen levels in seawater by ultraviolet absorption spectrophotometry

Sunscreen is released into the marine environment and is considered toxic for marine life. The current analytical methods for the quantification of sunscreen are mostly specific to individual chemical ingredients and based on complex analytical and instrumental techniques. A simple, selective, rapid, reproducible and low-cost spectrophotometric procedure for the quantification of commercial sunscreen in seawater is described here. The method is based on the inherent properties of these cosmetics to absorb in the wavelength of 300–400 nm. The absorption at 303 nm wavelength correlates with the concentration of most commercial sunscreens. This method allows the determination of sunscreens in the range of 2.5–1500 mg L(-1), it requires no sample pretreatment and offers a precision of up to 0.2%. The spectrophotometric method was applied to quantify sunscreen concentrations at an Atlantic Beach with values ranging from 10 to 96.7 mg L(-1) in the unfiltered fraction and from the undetectable value to 75.7 mg L(-1) in the dissolved fraction. This method is suggested as a tool for sunscreen quantifications in environmental investigations and monitoring programs.