New evidence shows that many makeup products that have passed their expiry date, as well as many beauty tools — particularly makeup sponges — that people do non periodically clean, harbor potentially harmful leaner, such every bit Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli.

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Dirty makeup sponges harbor the highest amount of bacteria amongst beauty products, new research shows.

Millions of people around the world use makeup to enhance their features and express their personality.

According to recent data, every bit of May 2017, 31% of people aged 18–29 years, 41% of people aged 30–59 years, and 35% of individuals aged sixty years and over wear makeup on a daily footing in the United states.

However, applying makeup in bathrooms, public toilets, and on car, train, and airplane journeys gives makeup products and associated beauty tools plenty of opportunities to assemble potentially harmful bacteria.

All makeup products accept a "shelf life," which refers to the period during which they are typically safety to use. The duration of this period varies from production to product, and improper use of makeup — such as rubbing eyeshadow with unclean fingers — can affect information technology, too.

Many companies use a symbol (an opened makeup jar) and a number — representing a number of months — on the packaging to indicate how long these products are rubber to apply for later on a person has opened them.

European Marriage regulations enforce the rule that all makeup products on sale in East.U. countries should feature this shelf life information, which they telephone call "period of time afterwards opening," on the packaging. Withal, the same is not true for the U.S.

According to the Food and Drug Assistants (FDA), "[t]here are no U.Due south. laws or regulations that crave cosmetics [including makeup] to have specific shelf lives or have expiration dates on their labels." Every bit a result, in the U.S., at to the lowest degree, manufacturers tin get abroad with not giving consumers any information most the length of time for which a makeup product remains safe.

Additionally, many makeup users also ain special tools, such equally brushes and sponges, to employ their products. These tools, too, can easily selection upwards harmful leaner, simply many users still neglect to clean them as oftentimes as they should.

At present, a new study from the School of Life and Wellness Sciences at Aston University in Birmingham, United Kingdom, adds to the existing evidence that makeup products and cosmetic applicators harbor dangerous bacteria.

In their study — the findings of which announced in the Journal of Applied Microbiology — Amreen Bashir, Ph.D., and Prof. Peter Lambert analyzed samples from 467 dazzler products that U.K. users had donated. These products included: 96 lipsticks, 92 eyeliners, 93 mascaras, 107 lip glosses, and 79 beauty blenders (makeup sponges that people use to utilize foundation or concealer).

The researchers' tests revealed that about 70–xc% of all these products were contaminated with leaner and that dazzler blenders were the worst offenders.

Predominantly, the investigators found S. aureus, Due east. coli, and Citrobacter freundii — which are bacteria associated with skin infections, food poisoning, and urinary tract infections (UTIs), respectively.

"[T]he majority of contaminants [were] found to be staphylococci/micrococci. Enterobacteriaceae were likewise detected in all product types, with specially high prevalence in the beauty blenders (26.58%)," the researchers write in their written report paper.

Beauty blenders also had the highest rate of contamination with fungi, at 56.96%. The investigators believe that this is because people must outset moisten these sponges to be able to apply makeup with them. Moist surfaces, the study authors explain, provide fertile breeding grounds for fungi.

Some of the highest loads of bacterial contaminants — particularly Enterobacteriaceae — were besides present in lip glosses, with lipsticks demonstrating the lowest rate of contamination.

According to self-reported information from the people who had sent these products to Bashir and Prof. Lambert for their research, only 6.iv% of beauty products had always received a cleaning. None of the submitted mascara wands had ever undergone cleaning.

Likewise, co-ordinate to the self-reported data, people typically applied equally many as 27.3% of the beauty products — and especially eyeliner — in bathrooms, which tin lead to contamination with fecal matter.

Concerningly, it also turned out that people had dropped 28.seven% of the products on the floor, which can teem with bacteria. Of the beauty blender samples, people had handled or stored 35.6% of them in bathrooms and dropped as many equally 64.4% of them on the floor.

The researchers warn that these findings may spell trouble, peculiarly for immunocompromised individuals who are more prone to infection.

"Consumers' poor hygiene practices when it comes to using makeup, especially beauty blenders, is very worrying when you consider that we found bacteria such as E. coli — which is linked with fecal contagion — convenance on the products we tested."

Amreen Bashir, Ph.D.

"More needs to exist done to help educate consumers and the makeup industry every bit a whole about the need to wash dazzler blenders regularly and dry them thoroughly, as well as the risks of using makeup across its death engagement," emphasizes Bashir.