Abstract

A lot of questions have arisen regarding thesafety of chemical/traditional preservatives in cosmetics.The interest of using natural preservatives in cosmeticformulations has been grown extremely. The chemicalpreservatives are replaced by other cosmetic ingredientswith anti-microbial properties that are not classified aspreservatives in the Annex VI of the Commission Directive76/768/EEC, in order to produce preservative-free ornatural preserved or self-preserving cosmetics. This studyaims to evaluate the efficacy and stability of alternativepreservatives such as levulinic acid and anisic acid inorder to produce natural preserved cosmetics for woundhealing and moisturizing gel. The above mentionedalternative preservatives protected sufficiently both thehealing and moisturizing gel against bacteria and fungiexamined under the challenge test procedure, satisfyingthe A criteria of the European Pharmacopoeia, and alsomaintained their efficacy during the use of the productsby consumers. The physicochemical stability of finalproducts was proved through accelerated ageing test at42°C, 5°C and cycle test.