Determination of Retinoic Acid Levels in Whitening Cream Preparations Circulating in the Kudus City

Abstract

Retinoic acid is one of the active substances found in cosmetics. This study aims to determine the levels of retinoic acid in whitening cream preparations and compare the levels of retinoic acid with safe limits according to BPOM. To find out whether the whitening cream circulating in the Kudus City contains retinoic acid find out how much retinoic acid is in the whitening cream and find out whether the whitening cream circulating in the Kudus City is safe to use according to BPOM standards. In this study, the Thin Layer Chromatography method was used for qualitative analysis with n-hexane eluent: acetone (6:4) v/v. The results were observed under UV254 nm light. The UV-Vis spectrophotometric method was used for quantitative analysis with a wavelength of 288 nm. The TLC test results for samples A, B, C, D, and H had Rf values and spot colors that were almost the same as the reference standard for retinoic acid. The Rf values for samples A, B, C, D, and H were 0.6, 0.63, 0.6, 0.6, and 0.57, respectively. Meanwhile, the standard Rf for retinoic acid is 0.6. Retinoic acid levels obtained from samples A, B, C, D, and H were 0.2769%, 0.1209%, 0.1205%, 0.2756%, and 0.2809% respectively. Samples A, B, C, D, and H were positive for retinoic acid, with the levels of retinoic acid obtained still within safe limits according to BPOM.