Therefore these preparations should

Therefore these preparations should obey Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) rules in EU and also in Turkey 1. Unless obeying these rules, any microbial contamination that occurs may cause harmful effect even for preparations and for users’ health. Microorganisms that should not be allowed to be found in cosmetic preparations are; Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Salmonella spp., Candida albicans, Clostridium spp., and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Limits of microorganisms that can be found in cosmetic preparations are also mentioned. For example; 500 CFU/g in cosmetics that are used for eye area, 1000 CFU/g in other cosmetics in 1g or 1ml of the prepara- tion (2,6). For this reason in investigating the microbial conditions of the cosmetic preparations 2 points are important; the first one is the aero- bic microorganism number in 1g or 1ml of the sample and the second one is the existence of some specific microorganisms such as S.aureus, P.aeruginosa, and C.albicans 7. Although cosmetics obey the mentioned rules, to control microbial growth and to stabilize any cosmetic product, some form of preservative needs to be used. Antimicrobial preservatives are substances added to dosage forms to protect them from microbial contamination. However, in many cosmetics no expiry date has been reported and may loose the pre- servative activity and became a potential risk for microbial contamina- tion. In this study it was aimed to determine the microbial contamination and preservative activity in some used cosmetic samples that have not an expiry date report.