MICROBIAL SURVEY OF SHARED-USE COSMETIC TEST KITS AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC

Some people like to try cosmetics before purchasing them. With repeate d use by different customers, however, the tester kits provided by man y retail outlets can become potential vectors of microbial pathogens. A survey was conducted to assess the health risk from bacteria found o n shared-use cosmetics. A total of 3027 shared-use cosmetic product sa mples were collected from 171 retail establishments throughout the con tiguous United States. Eye, face and lip cosmetics were tested with in situ nondestructive swabbing and the use of the Transette 3R Modified Amies Charcoal Culture and Transport System. Bacteria were isolated f rom about 50% of the items for all three categories. Semiquantitativel y-estimated mean densities were 2288, 1685 and 1088 CFU g-1 for eye, f ace and lip products, respectively. Ranges for all categories were 0-1 0(5) CFU g-1. About 5% of the items had bacterial counts above 5000 CF U g-1 (eye products) or 10 000 CFU g-1 (other products). More than 60% of isolates were typical of microflora from human skin; the remainder were environmental microbes. About 60% of the isolates were Gram-posi tive cocci: Staphylococcus spp. (especially S. epidermidis) and Microc occus spp. The Gram-negative pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa constitut ed 0.07% of the isolates. The survey results suggest that the preserva tion systems of some of the cosmetics failed under excessive use (abus e), and indicated a potential for microbiological safety problems with shared-use cosmetics.