A cosmetic product is a substance which is used on various external parts of the human body in order to enhance its beauty. Basically these cosmetic products are used for the purpose of cleaning, protection, perfuming and beautifying the appearance etc. Cosmetics are the products which are designed for contemporary use such as deodorants, lipsticks, moisturizing lotions and other makeup products. These products are available in market in various forms. As these are used widely by human beings so, should be safe and healthy to use. Unfortunately many of these products do not comply with the rules of FDA, so many of these products contain carcinogenic ingredients as well as heavy metals such as lead, mercury, nickel, copper, cobalt and arsenic. Metals are basically contaminants present in a variety of cosmetic products, some of them like chromium and iron oxides are also used as colorants in these products. Serious health issues due to heavy metals include memory loss, mental retardation, skin cancer, retarded brain growth, depression, alzhimer, abnormalities in fetus development and infertility in males and females both.
The aim of this study is to find out the concentrations of different heavy metals such as nickel, chromium, zinc, iron, cadmium, mercury, copper, lead and selenium in 10 local local and 10 imported brands of lipsticks. All the samples were first digested by Diacid method and then the heavy metal detection of sample was done through Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer. For every metal, local samples were find more contaminated than the imported ones. The highest value among all the samples for lead detected was 0.385 ppm which is less than the safe limit. 0.385ppm < 1.0 ppm. Similarly in case of cadmium the mean of highest detected values was 2.09 ppm.
SUMMARY
44
Other metals like copper, zinc, chromium, mercury, selenium, nickel and iron showed values 0.36 ppm, 2.25ppm, 0.48ppm, 2.09ppm, 3.06ppm, 0.58ppm and 3.385 ppm respectively. Local samples contain somehow metal concentrations more than the safe limits given by EPA. Exposure to abnormal amount of heavy metals causes severe health hazards to human beings as describes above.