Storage Studies of Preservative Solutions in Commonly Used Plastic Containers

In an interesting article published in this journal recently, Armstrong reviewed work done on the uptake of preservatives by plastic packaging materials, a subject of importance to both the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. The purpose of this paper is to present in tabular form the percentage losses of aqueous preservatives stored in polypropylene, for which material Armstrong at the time could find no report in the literature, and also to reproduce in tabular form percentage losses in PVC and polyethylene. All three studies were originally conducted over a 12-week storage period, but the preservatives stored in polypropylene were left for a total period of 90 weeks, and these latter findings are included.