Overview
Afridi and colleagues measured lead in cosmetic products and in biological specimens from female dermatitis patients and healthy referents in Hyderabad, Pakistan. For the Index, the routeable product evidence is the cosmetic-product lead range by product type; biomarker results are exposure context rather than product occurrence values. The source page deliberately reports product-type ranges without naming the sampled consumer brands.
Key numbers
The abstract reports lead concentrations in cosmetic products as ug/g:
| Product type | N reported in abstract | Pb range |
|---|---|---|
| Lipstick | 15 | 50.5-120 ug/g |
| Face powder | 13 | 14.6-30.7 ug/g |
| Eye liner | 11 | 2.87-4.25 ug/g |
| Eye shadow | 15 | 15.3-21.6 ug/g |
The methods section separately states that market sampling covered 14 eye-shadow brands, 12 face-powder brands, 14 lipstick brands, and 10 eye-liner brands from January 2021 through December 2022, then prepared five composite samples by homogenizing product groups. The paper also reports higher lead in scalp hair, blood, serum, and nail samples from dermatitis patients than in referents; those biomarker values are not product occurrence values and should not be pooled with cosmetic concentrations.
Methods (brief)
Cosmetic samples were purchased from commercial and local markets in Latifabad, Hyderabad, Pakistan, stored at 4 C, dried, ground, and digested using microwave-assisted acid digestion with nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide. Lead was measured by electrothermal atomic absorption spectrometry, and certified reference materials were used to verify method performance. The biological sampling component compared dermatitis patients with healthy referents.
Implications
Certification: Adds Pakistan-market lead occurrence data for cosmetic matrices relevant to the whitening-products and broader personal-care evidence layer. The product-type ranges can inform cosmetic occurrence context, but the biomarker findings belong to exposure or health routing.
Courses: Useful for teaching the separation between product concentration, biomarker exposure, and clinical association.
App: Supports warnings and data gaps for cosmetic-product lead exposure without turning the wiki into a brand-ranked table.
Wiki pages this source may touch
Verification notes
- The PDF table lists consumer brand names, but this page omits them under the brand firewall and reports only product-type ranges.
- The abstract and methods give slightly different product counts by type. This page preserves the abstract counts in the key-number table and notes the methods-count discrepancy.
- The source is product occurrence plus biomarker context. Blood, serum, scalp-hair, and nail values should not be routed into product benchmark distributions.
Update history
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