Organic Beauty Products Certification Standards
A natural question
If you’re like many women, you might think you’re reading a foreign language when you check the product labels on your personal-care products.
Cyclohexasiloxane. Panthenol. Methylparaben.
Having trouble pronouncing them? That might be the least of your problems.
Depending on which Web site you consult, there are various warnings for each, ranging from skin irritations to cancer - which is why more shoppers are turning to products labeled “natural” or “organic.”
But holistic shopper beware: Things aren’t always what they seem in the organic aisle.
Question: Who regulates cosmetics?
Answer: The first thing to realize is that, in general, cosmetics do have to meet some federal safety standards. Under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which is enforced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, cosmetics can’t be harmful, poisonous, prepared or packaged in unsanitary conditions, or consist of “any filthy, putrid or decomposed substance.”
That, however, doesn’t address the use of all those hard-to-pronounce substances that manufacturers of organic products presumably try to avoid.
In fact, the FDA doesn’t regulate the use of words such as “organic” or “natural” on cosmetic or personal-care product labels. That’s where the United States Department of Agriculture comes in.
The USDA applies the same certification standards to organic products as it does to food. Therefore:
• To be “100 percent organic,” a product must be made with only organically produced material.
• To be “organic,” the product must contain 95 percent organic material.
• To be “made from organic ingredients,” the product must be 70 percent organic.
The first two designations are marked with a black or green USDA circle; the latter is written somewhere on the product.
The problem is, not many products carry those USDA stamps. Beauty companies, like food companies, sometimes don’t have the funds to apply for a USDA certified-organic stamp. But just because it doesn’t have a stamp doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not organic.
And Andrea Kane, editor of “The Organic Beauty Expert” blog on natural and organic beauty products, notes that even a stamp is no guarantee of purity. She says that USDA standards require that a certain percentage of the product be certified organic, but “water, juice or aloe vera can be used to boost that number.”
Which leaves consumers with one option: Read the label.
Q: What should I look for on the label?
A: A few things to pay attention to:
• Make sure a product that uses “organic” or “natural” in its name really is. Sometimes, it’s just a marketing ploy.
“Palmer’s Olive Oil and Organic Body collection come to mind,” Kane says. “Since the FDA does not regulate the usage of natural (or) organic, they’ve created an entire organic line that doesn’t contain one organic or certified-organic ingredient.”
Chris Smith, the head health and beauty-aid buyer for Vitamin Cottage, said shoppers should buddy up with a body-care manager at a store they trust and quiz them.
“Yes, marketing can be misleading,” she said. “Ask questions. ‘Organic’ or ‘natural’ in a name may or may not mean that the entire body-care product is organic.”
• Check out your products in online databases.
Keep in mind that much of the organic/natural movement is based on a theory that natural is better - and there is little hard evidence that synthetic compounds pose an imminent threat.
If you want more info, write down several ingredients in a product and plug them into www.cosmeticsdatabase.com. It’s a database run by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that tests foods and products for potentially harmful ingredients. The database also ranks “Top 20 Companies of Concern” - companies with the highest average levels of concerns, culled from 110 companies that have 50 or more products in the database. Something you might not suspect: Half of the 20 companies listed sell mineral makeup. A third of the 20 are self-proclaimed “ecofriendly” companies.
Also check out the Organic Consumers Association, another nonprofit watchdog group, at www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/index.cfm.
As a quick guide, the OCA suggests avoiding products with chemicals that end with the suffix “eth”, such as laureth or myreth sulfate.
And beware ethoxylation, the association warns.
“Ethoxylation, a cheap short-cut companies use to provide mildness to harsh ingredients, requires the use of the cancer-causing petrochemical ethylene oxide, which generates 1,4-Dioxane as a by-product,” according to a consumer alert published by the OCA. 1,4-Dioxane is “known to the State of California to cause cancer,” the report states.
Also avoid labels that mention PEG, a harmful chemical compound, said David Steinman, author of “The Safe Shopper’s Bible.” McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this report.
