QUALITATIVE EVALUATION OF MARKETED AYURVEDIC RED TOOTH POWDER BY NAMBURI PHASED SPOT TEST

Simple and precise quality control analysis of consumer goods is the goal of rising FMCG sector. Ayurvedic red tooth powders are one of the most popular FMCG products in today’s market. The main ingredient (≥80%) of these red tooth powders is Swarna gairik (Red Hematite), thus the qualitative evaluation of red tooth powder can be performed by analysis of Swarna gairik. Objective of present study is to develop a simple yet precise method for the quality evaluation of Ayurvedic red tooth powders. Three marketed samples of red tooth powders S-1, S-2 and S-3 were evaluated by Namburi phased spot test against a control sample C. The variation of color and pattern of the spots were carefully evaluated at three distinct time phases. There were marked differences among the color and pattern of the spots for all the three samples when compared with the control, C. Study revealed that S-1 contains standard Swarna gairik whereas S-2 and S-3 contains spurious Swarna gairik. We concluded that the NST is a simple and dependable technique for the evaluation of Ayurvedic red tooth powder.