Data missing for personal care ingredients

About a third of personal care ingredients are poorly characterized, according to a report published by ChemFORWARD , a collaboration between makers of personal care products, ingredient suppliers including Dow and Inolex, and the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund. The report’s authors analyzed the ingredient lists of 8,500 products. After accounting for substances that go by multiple names—such as glycerin, also known as glycerol—they found 2,279 unique ingredients. Of those, 66% are well understood and considered safe, whereas 3% “have known high hazards or are considered emerging chemical classes of concern,” the report says. Another 30% have significant gaps in their safety data. Personal care products tend to have a lot of ingredients in common. At the same time, nearly half the ingredients in the analysis appeared in fewer than 10 products each. The authors combined frequency and hazard data to recommend 10 priority ingredients for elimination and 10 for further