Cytotoxicity and mutagenicity of 'Al-Kohl', an eye cosmetic commonly used in Jordan.

We examined 50 samples of 'Al-Kohl', collected from northern Jordanian provinces, for their cytotoxicity and mutagenicity using the brine shrimp and Ames Salmonella mutagenicity bioassays, respectively. Twenty were unopened, ready-to-use, samples purchased from retail outlets, 20 were in-use samples obtained from ladies of different socioeconomic standards, and 10 samples were from the original stones used to prepare Al-Kohl. The frequency of positive samples for both cytotoxicity and mutagenicity was much higher in the ready-to-use and in-use samples of Al-Kohl than in the original stones. Out of the 50 samples examined, 20 (40%) showed some degree of cytotoxicity almost all involving ready-to-use or in-use samples. Among those samples, 12 (24%) were strongly cytotoxic, while eight samples (16%) showed mild cytotoxic activity in the brine shrimp bioassay. The results of the mutagenicity testing were obtained, without using any metabolic activation, with four test strains of Salmonella, namely TA97, TA98, TA100 and TA102. Wide variability in results was observed depending on the type of samples tested and the Salmonella strain used. More than 80% of the original stone samples were negative and the positive ones were mildly mutagenic while the ready-to-use and in-use samples showed similar mutagenicity, which was much more than the original stones against the four strains of Salmonella typhimurium used. Strain TA97 was particularly sensitive to the samples tested. Twelve per cent of the ready-to-use and in-use samples of Al-Kohl showed a strong mutagenic effect against the pre-mentioned strains. We recommended abandoning Al-Kohl as a cosmetic for application to the eye areas, based on these findings and the previous microbial contamination studies (2).