Bîrsan et al. 2023 - Mercury in cosmetic products

Bîrsan and colleagues measured mercury in cosmetic products and assessed exposure and health risk. The study is routeable for personal-care product evidence because it selected multiple cosmetic categories and directly measured mercury concentrations in products. It supports category-level cosmetics context without reproducing brand-level rankings.

Key numbers

  • Product frame: seven cosmetic categories with seven products selected from each category, for 49 products total.
  • The stated goal was to evaluate mercury concentrations in cosmetic products and assess health risk from exposure.
  • Mercury concentration was measured directly, with calibration based on known Hg concentrations.
  • Results are used by the authors to estimate exposure in mg/kg body weight/day.

Methods (brief)

The paper determined mercury concentration in cosmetic products using direct mercury analysis without sample pretreatment or preconcentration. Results are total mercury; the paper does not distinguish inorganic and organic mercury species.

Implications

Certification: Supports personal-care mercury occurrence context across cosmetic categories, subject to category mapping.

Courses: Useful for illustrating the difference between consumer-product occurrence and biological exposure estimates.

App: Can inform cosmetics risk context without brand-level disclosure.

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Verification notes

Brand names, if present in product tables, should remain behind the brand firewall. This source page summarizes category-level evidence only.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.

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0edf3ce2026-05-29ingest auto-fetched 2026-05-29 0000 batch 2: 10 source pages