Microbial contamination of cosmetics and personal care items in Egypt--shaving creams and shampoos.
We examined a total of 192 samples, including eight different brands of shaving cream and eight brands of shampoo, for their total aerobic bacterial, coliforms and fungal counts. Shaving creams were more heavily contaminated with bacteria than shampoos. Viable bacterial were not recovered from 57% and 10% of shampoos and shaving creams, respectively. Only 3% of shaving creams were heavily contaminated with more than 10(4) c.f.u./g, while none of the shampoos contained such a high number of bacteria. With regard to the medium range contamination levels, 52% of shaving creams showed bacterial counts ranging from 10(2) to 10(3) c.f.u./g or ml, compared to 15% of shampoos which were contaminated to the same level. Fourteen per cent of shaving creams were contaminated with greater than 10(3)-10(4) c.f.u./g or ml, compared to 1% of the shampoos. No coliforms were recovered from either the shaving creams or the shampoos; however, Staphylococcus spp. were detected in six samples of both shampoos and shaving creams. Some of these Staphylococci, were aureus type. One isolate of Pseudomonas aeruginosa was also detected in a sample of shampoo. The incidence of fungal contamination was much less than the bacterial contamination. No viable fungi were recovered from 88% and 76% of the shaving creams and shampoos, respectively. The majority of the remaining samples, for both products, were contaminated with less than 100 fungal cell/g or ml. The pH of all the tested samples was alkaline (pH 7.2-9), which is well known to inhibit fungal contamination.