Titanium dioxide in face powders and eyeshadows: Developing an analytical methodology for accessing customer safety.

BACKGROUND

Titanium dioxide (TiO2), a white powder, represents the opacifier used in many products, including drugs, foods, cosmetics, paints, and dyes.

METHOD: The Uv-Vis spectrophotometry was a particularly suitable technique to quantify TiO2 in the solutions obtained from cosmetics. In this work, we determined the TiO2 content in a total of 88 samples of eye shadows and face powders of different brands and costs. Before to analyse the samples, we developed the mineralization and analysis method, in fact, fusion with potassium bisulphate would be very laborious because it must be carried out on one sample at a time and requires very long times, instead, the mineralization with the acid mixture and the aid of microwaves allowed us to solubilize six samples at the same time within 45 min.

RESULTS

From the results obtained, we can state that the highest concentrations of TiO2 are found in the eyeshadows with a maximum value of 36% in a blue eyeshadow.