Understand the harmfulness of cosmetic ingredients and purchase safety products

The most popular argument in the cosmetics industry is "product safety." In particular, many well-known brands or some hot-selling products have frequent problems in terms of security, which is even more worrying.

Therefore, consumers are paying more and more attention to the safety of the cosmetics used, recognizing the importance of safe products to the skin, and more carefully confirming whether the products contain harmful ingredients at the time of purchase. However, the standard of cosmetic safety is still ambiguous. Although there are more and more corporate products that abandon artificial flavors, synthetic pigments, and paraben preservatives, it is difficult to make appropriate judgments on the safety of cosmetics without confirming all the ingredients.

The situation of organic products is similar. There are more than 10 kinds of organic certification marks, and the standards of the certification bodies are also different. Therefore, the proposition of "organic products, that is, safety products" cannot be established. So, as a consumer, how can we correctly judge and purchase safe products? The answer is to carefully understand the full composition of the product, and then decide whether to buy.

However, it is not an easy task for the average consumer to judge its harmfulness from a pair of difficult chemical terms. Complex terminology can make consumers more confused, so a system that can make objective judgments is needed. For example, EWG (Evirtmental Working Group's) is a non-profit environmental citizen group in the United States, as a founding member of the Cosmetics Safety Program, to reduce the harmful substances on the planet.

EWGSKINDEEP operated by EWG is a webpage that can quickly and easily confirm the harmful components of cosmetics. Based on objective data such as clinical and academic, the ingredients, products and brands of cosmetics are classified according to the score of 0-10.

The safety of each component on the skin, 0-2 is divided into safety, 3-6 is divided into need to pay attention, 7-10 is divided into danger, as long as the name or brand name of the ingredient is entered into the website, the degree of harm can be quickly learned. A little confirmation from the webpage reveals that there are many unsafe ingredients in famous brands at home and abroad.

For example, Poloxamer 184, a synthetic surfactant widely used as a surfactant, shows an organ-hazardous substance having a 6-8 degree of damage according to the results of EWSSkinDeep, and may cause allergy when used. The artificial flavor added to improve the senses is a substance that causes a degree of harm of 8 such as headache, dizziness, and itch.

A person from a famous cosmetics brand said: "In order to modify the cosmetics applied to improve the skin, it may cause harm to the human body. We must recognize this fact. We want to make the skin fundamentally improve health and confirm the whole ingredients of the product. Products that purchase safe ingredients are the most critical."