WHAT REPLACES PARABENS? THE PARABEN-FREE LABEL ACROSS PRODUCT CATEGORIES IN THE OPEN BEAUTY FACTS DATABASE

Many cosmetic products carry the label "without parabens", but a product still needs a preservative. This study asks in which product categories the label is most common and which preservatives the labelled products contain instead. It uses the open Open Beauty Facts database (export of 16 October 2026, 77,673 products), in which 925 products carry the tag "without paraben". The share of labelled products was compared across categories, and five common preservatives were searched for in the ingredient lists of 864 labelled and 20,622 unlabelled products with readable lists. The label was 8.7 times more frequent in hair and skin products (5.4%) than in all other categories (0.6%), and most frequent on shower gels (10.3%) and shampoos (7.0%); it was almost absent on makeup and never found on perfumes. Sodium benzoate was the clearest replacement: it was listed in 45.0% of labelled products against 28.5% of unlabelled ones, and the difference held after adjusting for category and inside shampoos and shower gels. The apparent excess of phenoxyethanol came from a single brand. No labelled product listed a paraben. A "paraben-free" product is therefore usually preserved with other substances, most often sodium benzoate.