Heavy Metal Index
Ask the IndexAboutIndex Pro

Heavy Metal Contamination of Popular Nail Polishes in Iran

Cite this pageVersion history

Overview

Karimi and Ziarati measured cadmium (Cd), total arsenic (As), total chromium (Cr), lead (Pb), and nickel (Ni) in 150 nail-polish samples purchased from Tehran beauty shops in 2014. The sample frame covered 13 colours and products made in several countries. This is direct lane a1 occurrence evidence for leave-on manicuring preparations, with brand names stripped under the Part 12 firewall.

Key numbers

  • Sample count: 150 nail-polish samples.
  • Product colours: yellow, beige, silver, pink, white, violet, brown, golden, green, black, colorless, red, and blue.
  • Sampling market and year: beauty shops in Tehran, Iran, in 2014.
  • Figure 1 colour-level Cd means, in the source’s plotted order beige, golden, brown, red, white, black, blue, yellow, pink, green, silver, violet, colorless: 0.169, 0.1359, 0.1324, 0.1189, 0.1142, 0.1093, 0.1048, 0.0894, 0.0814, 0.0733, 0.0666, 0.0552, 0.0742 µg/ml.
  • Figure 1 colour-level total As means, same colour order: 1.7564, 1.9984, 1.1128, 0.889, 2.5556, 0.7321, 3.778, 1.7528, 0.8345, 5.3142, 1.0031, 0.9431, 0.7824 µg/ml.
  • Figure 1 colour-level total Cr means, same colour order: 0.8875, 0.7746, 1.8897, 0.9228, 0.7423, 1.8234, 0.7676, 0.659, 0.3961, 4.1743, 1.1124, 0.6526, 0.5667 µg/ml.
  • Figure 1 colour-level Pb means, same colour order: 9.8889, 3.0791, 6.3249, 5.9482, 3.7458, 28.763, 1.6492, 9.7371, 24.444, 7.3563, 1.4667, 4.7778, 1.0067 µg/ml.
  • Figure 1 colour-level Ni means, same colour order: 0.8892, 1.6321, 1.098, 2.5541, 1.7241, 1.4325, 6.7342, 1.5532, 0.8972, 3.7343, 0.7868, 1.126, 0.8532 µg/ml.
  • Source text ranges for individual samples: cadmium 0.0472 to 0.7321 µg/g; lead 1.0067 to 33.7820 µg/g; chromium 0.3961 to 4.1743 µg/g; arsenic 0.23 to 5.89 µg/g; nickel 1.22 to 6.73 µg/g.
  • The authors state that black and pink samples had significantly higher Pb than other colours (p<0.05), green had significantly higher Cr (p<0.05), and blue had significantly higher Ni (p<0.01).
  • The paper reports that 57.8% of the 53 samples made in China had lead content higher than 20 µg/ml, and the maximum lead level reported in that country-origin subset was 198.6 µg/ml in a black sample.
  • The source quotes Canadian maximum permissible limits for cosmetic impurities as cadmium 3 ppm, lead 10 ppm, and chromium 3 ppm.

Methods (brief)

Nail polishes were painted onto tared weighing paper, dried, weighed into digestion vessels, and digested by EPA Method 3051 using a Multiwave 3000 microwave system. The digestion used 10ml nitric acid and 1ml hydrofluoric acid with approximately 0.5g of sample, followed by transfer and dilution to 50ml with 10% nitric acid. Metals were analysed by inductively coupled plasma instrumentation named in the paper as “Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry” and “Varian 730-ES Axial ICP-OES: USA”; the source therefore has a method-name inconsistency between ICP-MS text and ICP-OES instrument naming. Statistics used ANOVA, two-way ANOVA, hierarchical clustering, and principal component analysis; results are described as Mean(μg/g)±SE or Mean(μg/ml)±SE from three replicates in each test.

Implications

Certification: Direct occurrence evidence for HMTc Category 13 leave-on manicuring preparations. The paper supports adult nail-polish product-row evidence for Cd, total As, total Cr, Pb, and Ni in the Iranian retail market; chromium is total Cr and cannot substitute for hexavalent chromium (Cr-VI).

Courses: Useful for brand QA and regulatory-affairs training on pigment-associated metal variation in cosmetic products, and on why color-level aggregation is safer than brand-level reporting.

App: Supports the manicuring-preparations-leave-on product page for heavy-metal occurrence. It does not support ingredient-specific contamination profiles because the study reports finished products by colour rather than ingredient lots.

Microbiome: No microbiome endpoints.

Update history

No substantive edit history is available in this build. The full commit record is available in git.

Referenced by