Food & Cosmetics

Safety first

Food and cosmetics manufacturers have always faced quality assurance and analysis challenges. Products must meet safety specifications and regulatory standards. With increased consumer concerns about what is in their foods and cosmetics and the safety of the food they eat and products they use, manufacturers have even more reasons to be vigilant about the composition of their products.

Into this environment, PANalytical delivers systems and support that provides the best heavy metal performance, rapid product and raw material fingerprinting and enhanced data security designed to satisfy the most stringent regulations.

Why X-ray analysis?

Among other analytical techniques, XRF instruments are used routinely for research, quality assurance and quality control in industry and contract laboratories as well as regulatory agencies. Products can be checked for adulteration or product tampering, chemical composition can be verified and changes caused by processing determined. Importantly, contaminants such as lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic, for example, can be readily determined.

XRF technique may be used to determine the concentration of major metallic elements such as Na, Si, K, Fe, Cu, Zn, minerals such as Zn, Fe, Mg, Ca, toxic elements such as As, Pb, Cd, contaminants Pb, Hg and many others used as fillers, pigments and other additives.

Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) is a further X-ray method that is increasingly being used to measure nanomaterials in cosmetics, TiO₂ particles in sunscreen, for example.