“…Parabens are alkyl esters of 4-hydroxybenzoic acid (4-HB) and are widely used as preservatives in consumer products including processed foodstuffs (Liao et al, 2013a,b), cosmetics (Guo and Kannan, 2013;Guo et al, 2014;Baranowska et al, 2014), toiletries (Guo and Kannan, 2013;Guo et al, 2014;Baranowska et al, 2014), paper products (Liao and Kannan, 2014) and pharmaceuticals (Baranowska et al, 2014) due to their low cost, effectiveness over a wide range of pH, high stability, water solubility and a broad spectrum antimicrobial activity. In particular, preservatives are added to pharmaceuticals to prevent any microbial growth and/or degradation of the drug (i.e., to increase the shelf-life).…”