function clean($postVars)
{

        $len = count($postVars);
        $i=0;

        $cleaned = array();

        while($i < $len) {
            $cleaned[$postVars[$i]] = mysql_escape_string( strip_tags( html_entities($_POST[$postVars[$i]], ENT_QUOTES,'UTF-8') );
            $i++;
        }

        return $cleaned;
}

$fields = array('newUser','newPass','newPassConfirm','newMail');
$data = clean($fields);