35O JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS CHICAGO CHAPTER NEWS THV. ^NNUA•. Ladies' Night was held on June 13th at Henrici's Restaurant in the Merchandise Mart. Vic Perry, fvmed night club and T.V. artist, was featured entertainer. He has appeared in 30 countries as "The King of Thieves" and "The World's Greatest Pickpocket." As is the usual custom, each lady present received a gift package of products donated by the Chicago area cosmetic manufacturers. NEW ENGLAND CHAPTER NEWS ON THURSDAY, April 27th, the regular meeting was held at Armand's Beacon Terrace, Framingham, Mass. The program consisted of a regular business meeting and a movie entitled "Perfome Production in France." The movie was provided by the French Government through the facilities of the French Consulate, New York City. April marked the first ap- pearance of the New England Chapter's Newsletter with Dr. Richard E. Faust as its first editor. "Plastics, the Revolution in Packaging" was the title of a talk presented by Dr. Roger Brandt of Thursday, May 25th. Dr. Brandt has been in this field since its infancy. He is presently connected with the Bradley Sun Division of the American Can Company. Dr. Brandt presented a flow diagram of the formation of a plastic tube from the raw material to finished product. He covered the various ma- terials presently being used for the formation of plastic tubes, such as polyethylene and polyvinyl chloride and also discussed new materials which are presently under evaluation such as nylon and polypropylene. The speaker pointed out that there were many pitfalls connected with the packaging of products in plastic tubes, and he stressed the necessity for studying the stability of the product in the package. It was pointed out that plastic tubes can be either lined on the inside or coated on the out- side with various materials which either enhance the appearance or the barrier qualities of the plastic tube.

EFFECT OF VARIOUS METALLIC IONS 313 skin in vitrc, we noticed that when the skin of the animal had been fixed in the culture medium with a nickel clamp the growth of the fungus was checked. Secondly: in the course of our research aimed at finding self-sterilizing tissue, we became aware that tissues impregnated with silver nitrate, blackened by the sun, retained their antistaphylococcic property even after having been through the automatic laundry seven times (Fig. 1). Finally during the past year we have seen three patients suffering from contact eczema due to propyl or methyl p-hydroxybenzoate which are also used as preservative agents in numerous preparations of • .. :..•? %%'•g "•' '"' ..'".•'•,..:.:,!".:'..'..'.i'•'..,..!." :"• *•:•':"".• .,'.... ".::..." ':•:,. :: .•,:".:' ".:':.. :'. ............ , .... 2• '•' Figure. 1.•Tissue pieces after seven washings, on Staphylococcus aureus culture. Lift, control, right, previously impregnated with AgNO• solution and exposed to the sun. cosmetic and food products. Therefore we have thought it of value, from the thecretical point of view as well as practically, to examine the effect of certain metals on a pathogenic fungus of the guinea pig,/lchorion quinckeanum and on two molds that may be of concern to manufacturers of cosmetic products, Penicillium glaucum and/lspergillus niger. TECHNIQUE The culture medium used is BBL Sabouraud Maltose Agar.* The metal salts in the form of chlorides (except AgNOs) are added in aqueous solution while the medium is still warm and liquid. The concentrations are calculated to make the number of metallic ions equivalent and are given in milliatomgrams of the metal in one liter of the culture medium. The controls are xun on the culture medium alone and on the medium with CI ions (in the form ofHCl)that correspond to the several concen- tratio•:s. A week after culturing one records the first results and three weeks later one reads the final outcome. This affords the possibility to es- tablish a probable retarding effect on the growth as well as its inhibition. Three culture tubes are used for the test yet, for some slight divergen- cies the response has been the same in all three experiments. * Baltimore Biological Laboratory Co.