Cosmetics & Personal Care | Monthly bulletin | April 2021
Check the compliance and safety of your products containing UV filters
Sunscreen is designed to protect your skin from the sun's damaging rays, and forms an important part of a complete sun protection strategy. UV filters, mainly used in sunscreen products and some other cosmetics and personal care products, play an important role in maintaining good health and are regularly subjected to specific verifications by scientific committees to ensure their safety and efficacy.
Octocrylene, an organic UV filter, degrades into benzophenone, a compound suspected of being carcinogenic and endocrine disrupting. Thus, benzophenone can be found in minor traces in products containing octocrylene (especially in cases where the expiration date has been exceeded).
The challenge is then for companies to control octocrylene throughout the lifecycle of the product and to ensure that benzophenone quantities always stay below toxicity thresholds in order to guarantee total harmlessness to human health.
Eurofins laboratories, ISO 17025 certified, perform a full range of analyses to check the compliance and safety of your products, including quantification of 22 UV filters, specific test protocol determining benzophenone, efficacy of UV filters, stability testing, and more.
Shape your businesses for China’s New Cosmetics Regulation
Since 1st January 2021, China's cosmetic sector (the world’s second-largest cosmetic market) has heralding a new era by implementing the Cosmetic Supervision and Administration Regulation (CSAR), replacing the Cosmetics Hygiene Supervision Regulations (CHSR).
With a focus on safety supervision, quality control and increased consumer confidence, the new regulation is a comprehensive series of rules, with six chapters and 80 articles, covering cosmetic raw materials and products, governing the cosmetics market-entry, production and operation, sales and import in China.
The CSAR highlights key changes, such as competent authority, cosmetic definition and classification, registration, labeling, claim of cosmetic products, new ingredient management, efficacy evaluation, safety assessment, online cosmetic supervision, animal testing, and more.
Our teams of experts keep their knowledge up-to-date and remain connected to the various changes that will take place during the year. Eurofins supports companies operating under this new cosmetics framework, from understanding the stakes of the new Chinese regulation to the different solutions to be implemented and selling compliant products.
How to surf the organic and natural cosmetics boom on full compliance and safety?
Demand for natural and organic raw materials and ingredients for cosmetics and personal care is on the rise globally. Environmental issues and changes to consumer behavior and lifestyles are creating openings for natural and organic raw materials and ingredients. Although these trends are generating opportunities, regulations and testing pose major challenges for companies seeking access to the market. In this dynamic landscape, certain rules have to be respected regarding natural or organic cosmetic designation and certification. Our teams of experts can support and advise you through the various stages of developing and selecting natural and organic raw materials and ingredients, including:
- Regulatory & Toxicology: toxicological profile, literature search for new ingredients without INCI, support on pre-evaluation and pre-expertise, selecting necessary tests, COSMOS folder, labeling review, naturalness index calculations, statement on organic origin: Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 and Regulation (EU) No 2018/848, etc.
- Physicochemical analyses: heavy metals, allergens, residual solvents, pesticides, protein assays, furocoumarin, vitamins, etc.
- In vitro safety tests covering skin irritation, eye irritation, sensitising potential, phototoxicity, genotoxicity, endocrine disruptors and transcutaneous/percutaneous passage, etc.
- Clinical tolerance assessment and clinical efficacy.
