Monday, August 7, 2017

GROWING UNSAFE COSMETICS BEING SHIPPED TO US

Herbally Radiant noted with concern that potentially unsafe skin care products are being sent to US in growing volumes. In its letter to Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr (D., NJ), FDA has expressed inability to carry out adequate inspections of cosmetic shipments coming from many countries due to scarce resources. At the same time, the letter reveals that about 2000 shipments a year are refused entry to the US, based on these inspections or other issues; the highest share of those blocked come from China, South Korea, Canada, France, and India. It emphasized that imports from China were particularly problematic.

Of the 3 million imported cosmetics shipments, FDA physically inspected just 9,871, or about 0.3 percent in 2016, and 15% violations were found in 1474 shipments.  In other words, in the small percentage of checks that FDA could carry out, the rate of rising violations was of concern.

This comes on the heel of several reports of potentially unsafe cosmetic products being sent by online suppliers which are doing a booming business on the back of aggressive marketing promotions.

While FDA should be able to increase inspections and bar imports from companies dispatching unsafe products, the consumers also need to exercise caution. Most of such cosmetic products use unsafe chemical ingredients not mentioned on the labels.


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