Abstract
Heavy metals have been analyzed on the non-woven from the 24 kinds of wet wipes and 8 kinds of mask packs. The following materials used in the non-woven according to each product are: rayon+polyester for the 12 wet wipe products, rayon+PET for the 5 wet wipe products, and rayon, cotton, rayon+polyester+cotton, pulp+polypropylene for the rest of the wet wipe products. No further information on the materials was found on the 3 wet wipes and 8 mask packs. However, polyester may be applied for the non-woven in wet wipes, because PET is part of the polyester group. The heavy metals analysis in the 24 kinds of wet wipes and 8 kinds of mask packs revealed the following: arsenic was found from $47.14{\pm}1.13$ to $71.75{\pm}1.64{\mu}g/L$ on the 3 products, the amount of nickel in the 2 products were $261.26{\pm}5.14$ and $1,242.63{\pm}43.71{\mu}g/L$, $53.69{\pm}1.45$ and $103.52{\pm}2.02mg/L$ on the 2 mask packs. It was also revealed that lead was detected from $7.23{\pm}0.32$ to $55.67{\pm}1.46{\mu}g/L$ on the 6 wet wipes, antimony was ranged from $187.86{\pm}5.24$ to $19,558.35{\pm}3,537.30{\mu}g/L$ on the 12 wet wipes, and $5.25{\pm}0.25$ and $8,936{\pm}55.22{\mu}g/L$ on the 2 mask packs. No cadmium, mercury, or thallium were detected from all the products. A high concentration of antimony might come from antimony trioxide, which was used as a catalyst when manufacturing the polyester. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that a non-woven used for cosmetic purposes should not use heavy metals as a catalyst when manufacturing, and it's important to clarify which materials are used in non-woven.