MORE CONSUMERS SUSPECT HARMFUL INGREDIENTS IN BEAUTY PRODUCTS

Cosmetics Design carries important observations by Science Communicator Louise Hidinger. She has been speaking at conferences and advising the consumers to learn about the way various ingredients in the personal care products work. She is also critical of the unverifiable claims that beauty industry makes in order to market their products.

Louis Hidinger says, "Most consumers know very little about their beauty products and the majority lack the basic science literacy to understand how they work. Unfortunately environmental organizations have been very successful as portraying most conventional beauty products as being filled with “dirty’ chemicals. At every seminar I get questions from consumers whether their personal care products are harmful, and what ingredients to avoid.  When I dig deep, I feel that these questions are motivated by fear and suspicion that the beauty industry is tricking the consumers with false product claims while secretly poisoning consumers with toxic ingredients."

"The beauty industry needs to inform consumers about the characteristics of various ingredients in their products, and how they work on the skin. The traditional thinking is that consumers know little about the science behind products and marketers skip any explanation of how a product works and instead blanket the consumers with effusive claims about what the product can do. This leaves an information gap that is readily filled by pseudoscience or bad information that abound on the internet."

She makes important point that the consumers need to know the properties of the ingredients in their beauty products. The problem is that the companies do not mention the ingredients on the labels. The consumers learns from the labels only the so-called results from the 'manufactured research'.

The beauty industry has been resisting the demand that, as in the case of labeling of drugs where ingredients are listed, the beauty products should also mention the contents on the package so that consumers make informed choice. 

In the case of natural organic formulations, it has been seen that at least key ingredients are listed on the labels. At Herbally Radiant, each product is labelled to indicate the ingredients that go into making a particular product.