Ban the beauty in trace element laboratories: contamination risks of eye shadow

摘要

Brazilian and Chinese eye shadow powders were evaluated for assessing the cosmetics as a source of contamination during sample preparation of biological materials. Nineteen chemical elements were measured by INAA. Highest mass fractions measured were for Ba (similar to 2.5%), Cr (similar to 1%), Fe (similar to 45%), Na (similar to 10%) and Sn (similar to 1). It was experimentally verified that more than 0.01 mg of eye shadow may drop off and as such may be a potential source of contamination, causing high relative errors depending on the type of biological matrices and chemical element considered.