Identification and quantification of ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol presented in pediatric cough and cold syrups in Iraqi local market

Ethylene glycol (EG) is a cheap available solvent used mainly as antifreeze and in resin industry while diethylene glycol (DEG) is usually used in natural gas industry. In the past few years there was increasing reports about EG and DEG intoxication especially in Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Panama, India, Gambia and some African countries. The intoxication was due to using some pediatric cough syrups that are contaminated with these harmful solvents which lead to acute renal failure and death in some cases. World Health Organization declares that any limit of EG or DEG more than 0.1% considered a safety issue in the pharmaceutical products. In 2023, random pharmaceutical samples from Iraqi local market were tested by independent US laboratory (Valisure LLC) and there was an EG contaminated cough syrup with approximately 21 times more than the accepted limits. The above report encourage the conduction of this research to investigate the presences and the amount of EG and DEG in cold and cough syrups available in the Iraqi markets. In this study, 12 samples of cold and cough pediatric syrups of different origin were collected from the local market in Iraq and the levels of EG and DEG were measured by using gas chromatography with flame ionization detection (GC-FID) to estimate the presence and concentration of these compounds in the selected drugs. The results showed that only one sample was containing 0.65% DEG , while other samples were containing less than 0.1% or undetectable levels of either EG or DEG.