Page 162 - CW E-Magazine (26-11-2024)

News from Abroad

INGREDIENT INTELLIGENCE
Report finds safety data gaps for number of personal

care ingredients; many high hazard chemicals common

in beauty products

About one-third of about 318,000
ingredients identified in beauty and
personal care items do not have public
toxicological profiles, while about 45
chemicals thought to be “high hazard”
are commonly added, a new compre-
hensive analysis of the industry’s pro-
ducts has found.

Source: ChemForward
This was revealed in a report of ingredients as an “urgent imperative The top ten ingredients most in
published by ChemFORWARD, a to fully understand their human and need of analysis are mica, trimethyl-
non-profit that promotes transparency environmental impacts”. siloxysilicate, nylon-12, Red 6 (CI
around beauty ingredients and compris- 15850), manganese violet (CI 77742),
ing makers of personal care products, The report will be used as the foun- Carmine (CI 75470), octyldodecyl stea-
ingredient suppliers including Dow dation for a new industry effort to fill royl stea-rate, octyldodecanol, bismuth
and Inolex, and the US-based nonprofit information gaps around the chemicals oxychloride (CI 77163) and phenyl
body Environmental Defense Fund. it uses, remove dangerous substances trimethicone.
from supply chains, and advocate for
The report analysed the ingredient shifts to safer alternatives. The report noted that safer alter-
lists of 8,500 products. After account- natives exist for the most dangerous
ing for substances that go by multiple The new report gleaned data from chemicals it identified.
names – such as glycerine, also known several chemical databases, such as the
as glycerol – they found 2,279 unique European Chemicals Agency. It will be Part of the problem in addressing
ingredients. Of those, 66% are well turned into a “centralised repository” the issue is industry secrecy – many
understood and considered safe, whereas of hazard data accessible to personal companies legally claim chemical pro-
3% “have known high hazards or are care and beauty producers. Chem- files are confidential business informa-
considered emerging chemical classes FORWARD also developed a chemical tion. The programme will address that
of concern,” the report said. Another grading system, while its toxicologists by assessing health risks but not by
30% have significant gaps in their safety will rate chemicals’ safety. revealing a chemical’s formulation.
data.
The report identified a top ten of The report models an approach that
ChemFORWARD stressed the need ingredients for further characterisation, could be adopted throughout the in-
for full chemical hazard characterisation and ten priority ingredients for elimination. dustry: conducting baseline ingredient

162 Chemical Weekly November 26, 2024

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