ABSTRACT
More recently, we have found that the Babylonians, Hebrews, and Egyptians nearly 6000 years ago used a green eyeliner made from malachite to emphasize the eyes. This eyeliner may have been the first preserved cosmetic, since malachite green is an excellent antibacterial dye (3). Even then the package was considered little more than a container for holding the product. Typically, a clay jar with or without a lid was good enough. Microbial contamination of cosmetics by mold spoilage, however, did not become recognized until about 50 years ago (4). During the 1960s, the contamination of cosmetics by Escherichia, Klebsiella, Enterobacter, Serratia, and Pseudomonas spp. (5,6) coupled with consumer-desired changes in formulations caused a demand for more effective and easier to use preservatives. By the mid-1970s, eye cosmetics came under special scrutiny since there were several cases of blindness due to Pseudomonas-contaminated mascaras (7). The products reached the consumer without microbial contamination, but could not withstand consumer use during which microbes were inadvertently added into the product (8,9).
