19 May 2010
Science Daily: New Method Could Stop Shark Oil Being Used in Cosmetics and Vaccines
A new method of analysing squalene and squalane, oils often used in the production of cosmetics and vaccines, can show whether they came originally from the liver oil of deepwater sharks or from olive oil. In the journal Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, Italian researchers explain how they developed a method to read the different isotopic fingerprints of the oils. For the first time manufacturers can verify whether they have been supplied animal or plant based products.

•