Subcritical water chromatography (SBWC) can replace traditional HPLC for separation and analysis of pharmaceuticals. Because hazardous organic solvents are eliminated from the SBWC mobile phase, sub critical water chromatography is a green separation technique. In addition, SBWC is economical since the purchasing of organic solvents and waste disposal costs required for HPLC can be saved. In this work, pharmaceuticals present in cold drugs including Vicks formula 44 custom care, Alka-seltzer plus, and CVS multi-symptom severe cold relief were successfully separated using subcritical water chromatography on an Alltech Adsorbosil C18 column. Both gradient elution and programmed temperatures were employed to achieve the best SBWC separation of pharmaceuticals contained in the cold drug samples studied. The recoveries of pharmaceuticals in the three real-world cold drug samples achieved by SBWC range from 94% to 105% with less than 5% RSD. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.