ABSTRACT
The microbial spoilage of cosmetics has been reported in the literature for many years (1-3). One of the first reported incidents (4) was the death of four babies due to tetanus in New Zealand in the year 1946, caused by using a contaminated talcum powder. The same vector was the source of two other cases of tetanus in an English hospital (5). Since the 1960s, cases of cosmetic-induced infections were described in parallel with the awareness of the same problem for topical drugs (6-12). The isolated organisms were Gram-negative bacteria from the genus Klebsiella, Enterobacter, Serratia, and Pseudomonas (13,14). The organism Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a particularly virulent hospital pathogen transmitted by eye cosmetics, led to cases of infections and even blindness (15-20), and also folliculitis from sponges (21). Studies were then conducted to evaluate the importance of the problem (22-29), and to investigate the primary contaminating sources such as raw materials, the personnel involved in the process manufacturing water, and packaging, and also the secondary sources such as the consumer (30).
