There's NO government-funded laboratory responsible for checking out that what we buy is safe.
It's entirely up to the manufacturers to decide what ingredients they put in the products they sell us. it is only after the product has been put on the market that any regulation kicks in.
Cosmetics are not subject to the same regulations as medicinal products such as drugs.
- Drugs are used to treat some medical ailment and they are intended to make changes to the body to treat the ailment. In the case of drugs, there are rigorous and lengthy trial and testing procedures which have to be completed before the regulatory bodies will approve the product for release on to the market.
- A cosmetic is a substance that is meant to be applied to the skin, hair, nails, lips, external genitals, teeth or mouth and whose function is to clean, perfume. change appearance, protect, condition or deodorise. In the case of cosmetics, there are no government requirements for testing cosmetic products before they are put on the market . A cosmetic manufacturer can put almost anything into their products. provided that the ingredient is not actually banned.
What regulation there is, is provided almost exclusively by the industry itself.
In the USA (followed by Australia), there is a Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel which is a voluntary organisation made up of representatives of the cosmetic manufacturers. This panel assesses the toxicity of ingredients that go into cosmetics and it decides for itself which ingredients to test and which hat to test.
In the European Union, the manufacture of cosmetics is regulated by the European Cosmetics Directive which again puts the safety testing on the manufacturers themselves. Government agencies on both sides of the Atlantic have powers to oversee this process, but in practice their role is mainly advisory and their powers are limited.
Repeated exposure to quite low levels of chemicals can cause the body's nervous system to be affected and the immune system to be compromised, resulting in susceptibility to an ever wider range of allergy triggers.
All these problems have emerged within the past fifty or so years, in line with the growth of the petrochemical industry. Petrochemicals are used in many materials and substances that we use every day, including plastics, detergents, medications, herbicides, pesticides, solvents, fuel oils, etc.
The personal care and cosmetics products that we use are often made from these industrially produced synthetic chemicals whose long-term effects are not known.
The weak regulation that is in place is failing to protect us. There are concerns that the allergies and sensitivities that we experience now may be the precursors to more serious problems such as cancer, reproductive disorders and birth defects.
And people who work in the beauty industry, such as hairdressers, manicurists and cosmetologists, may be exposed to much higher levels of potentially dangerous toxins.
For the sake of our own health and that of our children we should question the assurances we receive that chemical ingredients are 'safe,' and we should demand answers to the questions that an increasingly sceptical public are asking about the necessity of including untested chemicals in the products that we buy.
Cosmetic and personal care products manufacturers are required by law to print the product's ingredients on the packaging.
The ingredients have to be listed in descending order of weight: therefore the first ingredient of the list is the one which is the most present in weight or the product. Ingredients which are present in concentrations of less than 1% may be listed in any order after those in concentrations of 1% or more. Colouring agents may be listed after all the other ingredients.
Most cosmetics include 'aqua' (water) and 'parfum' (perfume) in their list of ingredients. In the case of perfumes, there is no requirement for the manufacturers to list the component ingredients of perfumes (many contain dozens of components), and so there is no way of knowing exactly what is in them.
The names of cosmetic ingredients appearing in ingredients lists are the standardised names which have been agreed between the EU Commission in Europe and the Food and Drug Administration in the USA. Using these common names has made it easier to import and export cosmetic products between markets which have similar regulations.
However, these chemical-sounding names are not very helpful in knowing what is in a product
-To most consumers, the list of Ingredients in a cosmetic product is incomprehensible.
-To a trained chemist, the list of ingredients is similarly meaningless because it does not convey the formal definition of the chemical compound. Chemicals have a precise and formal definition which can be much longer than a couple of words. So these ingredient lists, which are a type of shorthand notation agreed by those in the know, don't really serve a very useful function.
The packaging of the product is designed to sell the product, not to provide information to the consumer. When you buy the product, you are buying the dream — your decision to buy is based on hope and the manufacturers are betting on the probability that you don't really want to know what's in the bottle.
Save your Skin and your Money,
Make your own!
Marlene Daniels
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