ANALYTICAL METHODS FOR ORGANIC AND INORGANIC TOXICS DETERMINATION IN COSMETICS PRODUCTS

The widespread use has made preservatives become a special monitored group in commercial cosmetics, especially in the leave-on products due to the prolonged exposure. Additionally, recently there has been an increase in the demand for preservative-free cosmetics related to undesired adverse effects on human health, in order to minimize the amount in personal care products or produce preservative-free-cosmetics and verify the contents to avoid health risk. Hence, the simultaneous separation and trace-level determination in personal care products are important for both merchandise reliability and quality assurance. However, is not possible to exclude that heavy metals can be accumulated in the body over time and repetitive metal-containing product application can lead to significant exposure levels. In the case of some metallic powders such as nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), and cadmium (Cd), they are unintentionally added to the cosmetics as impurities during manufacturing of an ingredient or product, and represent a minor source of exposure compared to other pathways such as water, food or air. For these reasons it is necessary a deep knowledge of real toxics (organic and inorganic) content into personal care products and cosmetics using reliable, high-throughput, sensitive and selective analytical assays. In this chapter, recently developed method for the extraction, separation, and quantitative determination of organic (phthalates and parabens) and inorganic toxic (heavy metals) in cosmetic products are reported.