Parabens are used as preservatives in many thousands of cosmetic, food and pharmaceutical products. Several articles have pointed out the Parabens would effect estrogen's activity. It is an important issue to investigate the skin absorption of parabens in cosmetic products. The main purpose of this study is to compare the in vitro skin absorption of parabens in cosmetic product with or without addition of silicone by using flow-through diffusion cell system. Silicones used in the experiments were DM 100, DM 12500, CM 040 and 193C Fluid. Pig skins were used for evaluation the skin absorption. The results showed the absorption of methyl paraben ( M.P ) is larger than propyl paraben ( P.P ) in all formulation. There is no significance difference of the skin absorption of M.P and P.P with or without the addition of silicones under 10%, the absorption of M.P and P.P are increased, when the silicone contend rises to 10%. For different type formulation the order of parabens skin absorption are W/O ＞ O/W＞ essence. 校內校外均不公開，學年度：98，123頁
