Study of Temperature Effect on ?-Tocopherol Acetate in Commercial Synthetic and Herbal Fairness Skin Creams by UV-VIS Spectroscopy

India is a huge market for fairness creams. Herbal and synthetic fairness creams prefer α-tocopherol acetate in their formulation as it retards oxidation and rancidity of fat and oil-based formulations. It is also well known for its antioxidant activity against free radicals. During summers, when temperatures rise in most regions of India, the efficiency of α-tocopherol acetate as an antioxidant preservative is questionable in herbal as well as synthetic fairness cream formulations. It is very difficult to extract and quantify α-tocopherol acetate present in cosmetic creams by UV-VIS spectroscopy as large number of ingredients present in the cosmetic matrix which may interfere; therefore, UV-VIS Spectroscopy requires a method with special techniques of extraction. In this paper, two fairness creams (1-Herbal and 1-Synthetic) containing α-tocopherol acetate were investigated by this method at two different temperatures (370 C and 470 C) for six days and results were quite promising.