Personal Care & Beauty Products Testing

Martín-Pozo, Laura, et al. Talanta 234 (2021): 122642.

Personal care products (PCPs) and cosmetics are indispensable products in our daily lives. Their widespread use has made them potential exposure routes to certain pollutants that humans are typically not in contact with. One of these pollutants includes endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), molecules that can mimic the body's natural hormones and interfere with the endocrine system. Due to the high-risk health concerns posed by these endocrine disruptors, some have been restricted or even banned from use in cosmetics and PCPs. Therefore, there is a need for rapid, sensitive, and accurate methods to identify and quantify these compounds in cosmetics to ensure consumer safety and provide a deeper understanding of the true risks of human exposure.

The European Union has established some methods for determining the ingredients in cosmetics; however, for EDCs, only parabens have been considered. The EU suggests using thin-layer chromatography for identification and HPLC-UV for confirmation, which requires lengthy and laborious sample pretreatment. Therefore, it is suggested to seek simpler, faster, and more advanced analytical methods to accommodate scientific progress and determine the target compounds. The most promising methods are chromatographic separations, using either liquid chromatography (LC) or gas chromatography (GC).

Cacho, Juan Ignacio, et al. Journal of pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis 78 (2013): 255-260.

Previous reports have indicated the presence of bisphenol A (BPA) in personal care products (PCPs), such as shampoos, shower gels, or beauty creams. Considering that this substance can be absorbed through the skin, its presence in PCPs is prohibited according to the general principle of manufacturer or importer responsibility. Nevertheless, even if BPA is not intentionally added as an ingredient, its presence in these samples may be due to migration from polycarbonate plastic containers or the degradation of certain BP-containing components, such as silicones in hair conditioners, polyurethane thickeners, or water-insoluble polymeric particles in hair cosmetics. Given the widespread use of PCPs in actual social life, the development of rapid and sensitive analytical methods to ensure their safety for human health is highly meaningful.

This paper presents a simple and practical analytical method for the determination of three bisphenol (BP) compounds in commonly used personal care products (PCPs). Using an ethylene glycol-silicone (EG-Silicone) coated stir bar, simultaneous determination of bisphenol A (BPA), bisphenol F (BPF), and bisphenol Z (BPZ) was achieved through stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) coupled with thermal desorption-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (TD-GC-MS).

Alqarni, Abdulmalik M., et al. RSC advances 13.19 (2023): 13183-13194.

Parabens are esters of p-hydroxybenzoic acid, which are a class of organic compounds widely used as preservatives in pharmaceuticals, foods, and cosmetics. The most commonly used parabens are methyl paraben (MP), ethyl paraben (EP), propyl paraben (PP), and butyl paraben (BP). Due to their low cost, broad-spectrum activity, and chemical stability over a wide pH range, parabens can be used singly or in combination.s are exposed to parabens from various sources daily, and there is ample evidence in the literature that parabens may be associated with carcinogenicity and estrogenic threats, thereby posing potential risks to human health. In view of this, the European Union has set a maximum concentration of 0.4% w/w for individual parabens and a total paraben limit of 0.8% w/w in commercial products.

A dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME) coupled with ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-diode array detection (UHPLC-DAD) method has been developed and validated for the determination of parabens in personal care products.