{"id":929680,"date":"2023-03-01T13:45:53","date_gmt":"2023-03-01T10:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=929680"},"modified":"2023-03-01T13:45:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T10:45:53","slug":"what-a-trump-presidency-could-mean-for-safer-beauty-products","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=929680","title":{"rendered":"What a Trump Presidency Could Mean for Safer Beauty Products"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Safety Report<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

What a Trump Presidency Could Mean for Safer Beauty Products<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
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Beauty brands were set to clean up their formulas under recent legislation. What will happen now?<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Elizabeth Siegel<\/span> and Deanna Pai<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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Audrey Shtecinjo\/Stocksy – stock<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n
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Update (December 4, 2024):<\/strong> The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA) was signed into law in December 2022 to give the FDA more oversight over the cosmetics industry, with the goal of creating safer beauty products. Allure<\/em> reached out to the sources we interviewed at the time to get their take on where this legislation stands now, following the election of Donald Trump and a Republican majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Amidst talk of deregulation and FDA cuts, what is the future of this important piece of legislation?<\/p>\n

The majority of our sources don\u2019t believe that MoCRA as a whole will be scrapped, but there is concern that cuts to the FDA (either in budget or personnel) could lead to even more delays and setbacks than the legislation\u2019s implementation has already experienced. \u201cWe were supposed to see a proposed talc rule for testing for asbestos by the end of December of last year. So that’s about a year behind. We were supposed to see a rule on labeling for fragrance allergens by June of this year, and that is now six months behind. And we were supposed to see a rule on GMPs [Good Manufacturing Practices] next month,\u201d says Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group.<\/p>\n

The future of MoCRA and its proposed timeline is unclear, even to one of the key legislators responsible for its passage (MoCRA was a bipartisan piece of legislation). In a written statement to Allure<\/em>, Senator Patty Murray (D) of Washington State said, \u201cI am worried that the Trump administration will delay implementation of MoCRA or won\u2019t implement MoCRA well, and that more unsafe products will continue to enter the market and put our public health at risk. Although some key parts of the law we passed are already in effect, other parts of the law are still in the process of being rolled out. I will say, there is strong bipartisan consensus that these reforms are badly needed and long overdue. But Trump\u2019s proposals won\u2019t help this important work get done any faster\u2014in fact, they could seriously derail progress on implementing this important law. There will be real and devastating consequences to a Trump administration\u2019s reckless deregulation\u2014but I will fight back against any attempts to roll back the progress we made on cosmetics reform and work to protect American consumers.\u201d (We also went out to Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) who co-sponsored the legislation and had not heard back at press time.)<\/p>\n

One aspect of MoCRA has already been put into effect: As of July 2024, a system through which cosmetics companies must register their products is now active. And with these new mandatory registrations came a revelation. \u201cI think the market is much bigger than even the FDA had realized,\u201d says Benesh. Fulfilling MoCRA\u2019s mandate\u2014for the FDA to more closely monitor the cosmetics industry\u2014 will require resources, a lot of resources, for administrators, scientists assessing ingredient safety, and lawyers writing new rules. Personnel reductions could make it impossible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In good news for supporters of more closely regulated personal care products, MoCRA also has an ally in the beauty industry itself. Many companies have already spent money preparing their products to be compliant with these new regulations, or are already compliant because they work with international guidelines, says independent cosmetic chemist Perry Romanowski. And, as Benesh notes, prior to MoCRA and in the absence of the FDA, many states stepped in to ban harmful cosmetic ingredients, which in turn forced companies to reformulate and be more transparent with labeling. From California banning 50 chemicals to Oregon passing disclosure requirements to Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, and Washington banning PFAs\u2014not to mention New York\u2019s mercury ban\u2014state legislatures continue to add more bills to keep consumers safe. \u201cI think we will continue to see that state action so long as Congress doesn’t come in and try and preempt them,\u201d says Benesh. \u201cThat’s something else that we are concerned about with the Republican trifecta coming in, and will fight against.\u201d \u2014Megan McIntyre<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Amid all the breaking news in the United States at any given moment, you might have missed a recent, major development in the way your makeup, skin care, hair care, and more are regulated: On December 29, 2022, the\u00a0Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA) was signed into law.<\/p>\n

The beauty industry has had two months to process this new legislation \u2014 the first overhaul of ingredient regulations since before WWII \u2014 and there is optimism that it could be a great thing for consumers. But there are also some very big question marks: Will the new laws have an outsized impact on smaller, niche brands, while bigger ones go on with business as usual? And with more safety testing required, what exactly could we learn is lurking in our lipsticks? We talked to industry insiders about what they think MoCRA is going to mean for our favorite shampoos, moisturizers, and more.<\/p>\n

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Meet the experts:<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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  • Perry Romanowski\u00a0is a cosmetic chemist in Chicago.<\/li>\n
  • Marisa Plescia is a cosmetic chemist in St. Paul.<\/li>\n
  • Karin Ross is the executive vice president of government affairs for the Personal Care Products Council.<\/li>\n
  • Melanie Benesh is vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group.<\/li>\n
  • Senator Patty Murray (D) of Washington State<\/li>\n
  • Ginger King is a cosmetic chemist in Parsippany, New Jersey.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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    1.\u00a0 The FDA can now recall dangerous products.<\/strong> Yep, you read that right. The FDA has not previously been able to demand that a beauty product contaminated with something dangerous like asbestos or lead be taken off the shelves. So when you see brands recalling products \u2014 after learning about contaminants, for example \u2014 it’s all entirely voluntary. A few recent examples of that scenario: Certain\u00a0spray-on sunscreens and\u00a0aerosol dry shampoos and leave-in conditioners were pulled after an independent lab found they were contaminated with benzene, a known carcinogen, and a mass-market\u00a0body lotion and a high-end\u00a0laundry detergent were voluntarily recalled because of potentially harmful\u00a0bacteria growth. “Most often, recalls are due to microbial contamination that\u2019s pretty readily noticed by the company themselves, so they’ll pull the product,” says cosmetic chemist\u00a0Perry Romanowski.<\/p>\n

    Before MoCRA, the FDA could\u00a0request<\/em>\u00a0that a company recall a product, but that company wasn\u2019t\u00a0required<\/em> to issue the recall. They could ignore the FDA \u2014 as in, the government agency that oversees the beauty industry \u2014 and how messed up is that? “The FDA just hasn\u2019t had the kind of authority it needs to ensure cosmetic products are safe in the past and this new law is helping to fix that,” says Senator\u00a0Patty Murray (D) of Washington State, who spearheaded the law’s passing. Under MoCRA, says Murray, the FDA “can require reporting of safety concerns and, crucially, force recalls, so dangerous products don\u2019t put people at risk.”<\/p>\n

    Effective immediately, the FDA has enough muscle to demand recalls. And that could mean more of them \u2014 involuntary ones \u2014 in the future.<\/p>\n

    2. You might be hearing more about scary ingredients.<\/strong>\u00a0MoCRA is going to mean that more frequent testing for contaminants \u2014 like mercury, lead, benzene, and asbestos \u2014 will be required by beauty companies by the end of 2025. (Talc-containing products will have to undergo particularly rigorous screening for potential asbestos contamination.) But we might be seeing new headlines about nefarious ingredients in beauty products a whole lot sooner, perhaps in the coming months. While manufacturers certainly aren\u2019t incentivized to run tests that can pick up very low trace levels of carcinogens \u2014 levels below what the FDA deems “safe” \u2014 Romanowski predicts that independent labs will be conducting more sensitive tests that can detect those trace amounts. “It makes a good story,” he says. “There’s a certain amount of power in being able to point out things that aren’t a problem, but you can certainly make them a problem if the public gets scared enough about it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    Backing up for a second: Even potentially dangerous ingredients like benzene and mercury can exist at “safe levels,” deemed nontoxic by the FDA, in the creams and makeup you use every day. It used to be the case that testing wasn’t advanced enough to find these ingredients below those “safe levels.” But “analytical chemistry instrumentation continues to get more sensitive,” says Romanowski. “So, whereas you couldn’t detect lead in lipstick under one part per million [before], well, when you can [detect it at] one part per trillion, you’re going to find lead in everything.”<\/p>\n

    Take the benzene example: It’s possible this recent wave of recalls was spurred on by unprecedented contamination of aerosol sprays. It’s also possible that benzene was already in some aerosol sprays, it just wasn\u2019t there at levels high enough to be detected by the old tests. Maybe there weren’t benzene recalls before because “nobody was checking for benzene,” says Romanowski. “[Then] an independent company checked for benzene because they can [now] detect it at really low levels\u2026 [and that’s] the reason that there were so many recalls.”<\/p>\n

    Romanowski thinks all this testing could spur even more beauty industry legislation. To which a lot of people might say, “Great! We need more banned ingredients in the US!” This country’s ingredient safety standards are often criticized for lagging behind the EU, which has banned over a thousand more ingredients from consumer goods than we have. It’s something plenty of “clean” beauty brands are happy to tell you about, though it’s also worth mentioning that the logic behind this argument has its own critics: “The over 1,400 banned ingredients in Europe largely aren’t found in American cosmetics. Why? The list includes drugs, jet fuel, and a plethora of ingredients that are illegal to put in skin care [like prescription-strength] tretinoin,” Charlotte Palermino, aka, the internet’s skin-care myth buster, recently\u00a0posted on Instagram. “To use this as your \u2018gotcha\u2019 moment is misleading.” Romanowski agrees with the sentiment and also asserts that “if you do a survey of beauty products in Europe and compare similar products in the United States, you’re going to rarely find a chemical that doesn’t overlap. The truth is, big companies are following the EU rules anyway, so the vast majority of products people use are following those regulations.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    3. Smaller beauty brands could have a tough go of it.<\/strong>\u00a0It used to be that launching a beauty brand required pretty major scale \u2014 you had to produce enough serums, for example, to satisfy Sephora. Then came the internet and the concept of DTC or direct-to-consumer selling. Being able to sell your products online lowered the barrier for entry. But under MoCRA, that barrier will creep up again. Before or by 2025, “cosmetic companies will be subject to facility registration, good manufacturing practices, good recordkeeping and reporting of serious adverse events, and safety substantiation,” says\u00a0Marisa Plescia, a cosmetic chemist in St. Paul. In other words, a lot of the things Big Beauty does already, will be required of the Little Guys before they can start selling, too.<\/p>\n

    And that will call for more cash. “[Maybe] you’re going to have to lay out about $10,000 up front and, honestly, most people who want to start the next Burt’s Bees don’t have that money,” says Romanowski. “I often get contacted by entrepreneurs who say, ‘I have this great idea, I don’t have any money to do it, but maybe you could just work on spec.'”<\/p>\n

    That’s not to say that MoCRA’s GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice) requirements are a bad thing. Homespun brands “might grow something in their garden, blend it up in their blender, and put it in their products,” says Romanowski. “So they don’t have proper specifications and raw material controls. [Requiring these] is safer for consumers, ultimately.”<\/p>\n

    But it’s possible that that honey-and-goat-milk serum you’ve been buying from a local farm will be spared. The FDA has three years to flesh this part out. Existing companies that earn less than a million dollars a year may get certain exemptions.<\/p>\n

    4. Ingredients that can irritate the skin won’t be able to go incognito anymore.<\/strong>\u00a0This one is pretty straightforward: You’re going to see allergens disclosed on ingredient lists. In other news, yes, some of the most common irritants in beauty products aren’t currently disclosed on ingredient lists. That’s because they’re allergens found in fragrances \u2014 as in, the stuff that makes all kinds of beauty products, not just perfumes, smell so good (or just not so bad). Because fragrances are proprietary, their ingredients didn’t have to be disclosed before and irritants were often hidden under the umbrella term “fragrance.” But now, companies will be required to namecheck them. The biggest offenders are limonene, linalol, and citral. It’s “giving consumers more access to information from manufacturers,” says\u00a0Karin Ross, the executive vice president of Government Affairs for the Personal Care Products Council (the trade association for cosmetics in the US that worked with lawmakers to see this law passed). “Consumers can make informed choices about the best products for themselves and their families. Everyone deserves the right to know what\u2019s in their products.” Listing these ingredients “is already done in the EU, as fragrance allergens are the key source of irritation for consumers,” adds cosmetic chemist\u00a0Ginger King.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    5. So what exactly is the timeline for all these changes?<\/strong> A lot of MoCRA’s changes are supposed to happen within three years and the chemists we spoke to expect to see fragrance allergens appearing on ingredient lists closer to two. But the FDA hasn’t always kept up with timelines \u2014 delays happen, like when the FDA missed a November 2019 deadline for evaluating a backlog of sunscreen ingredients under the Sunscreen Innovation Act (signed by President Obama in November 2014). “The FDA is developing an implementation plan to address all of the new provisions in MoCRA and will share this information when available,” an agency representative told\u00a0Allure<\/em> in a statement. There’s reason to believe that could be sooner rather than later: MoCRA allocates funding to the FDA (eight figures a year for the next three years) to help them put the new changes into action. Plus, “the big companies are doing a lot of this stuff already and PCPC [the Personal Care Products Council,\u00a0a beauty industry lobby] is on board, so the FDA is not going to get pressure from them or from big companies to delay it,” says Romanowski. “The only pressure they would really get is [from] the indie beauty people, who will soon realize that this could be a pain in their ass but they don’t have the kind of clout, probably, to delay it.”<\/p>\n

    It’s not just Big Beauty that’s on board with MoCRA. The Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit watchdog known for calling out the beauty industry’s potentially harmful practices, is also positive about where the legislation landed. “These reforms were urgently needed and long overdue. For too many years, cosmetics were one of the least-regulated consumer product categories,” says\u00a0Melanie Benesh, vice president of government affairs at the Environmental Working Group. In her opinion, some of MoCRA’s highlights are that “companies will be required to test personal-care products made with talc for asbestos using state-of-the-art methods\u2026 and cosmetics companies will have to register with the FDA.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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    It’s a lot to digest, and you can bet there’s going to be a whole lot more to wrap our heads around as we continue to watch how MoCRA \u2014 and, very likely, more beauty product recalls \u2014 play out.<\/p>\n

    UPDATED (December 7, 2023):<\/strong> The FDA pushed back the deadline for beauty brands to submit their lists of products and manufacturing facilities by about five months, and confirmed that beauty brands earning less than $1 million per year will have to register their manufacturing facilities and products lists for their mascaras and eyeliners, and potentially other eye products, too (eyeshadow, eye makeup remover, liquid eyeliner, and false eyelash adhesive). \u201cMost likely there will be more scrutiny on producers who make products for use around the eye. The FDA has always been particularly careful about eye products,\u201d says Romanowski, explaining that\u2019s because the stakes are high and adverse reactions to eye products can, at worst, cause blindness. In terms of what it means for our daily routines, Romanowski says, \u201cI think it makes products safer for consumers. Small brands might not like it as much because it will be more expensive for them to produce products, but for consumer safety this is a big win.\u201d In terms of the shift in deadlines, Romanowski says, \u201cI think that the FDA is just trying to get more time to set their systems up. I don’t think ultimately this will have a big impact on MOCRA implementation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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    To read more about beauty products’ and ingredients’ safety:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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    • How Worried Should You Be About Your Beauty Products After Watching Not So Pretty<\/em>?<\/li>\n
    • Is It Time to Quit Dry Shampoo?<\/li>\n
    • Banana Boat Expanded Its Sunscreen Spray Recall Due to Benzene Contamination<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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      Now watch Kim Kardashian answer beauty questions from the internet:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

      Source URL: https:\/\/www.allure.com\/story\/mocra-beauty-industry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Safety Report What a Trump Presidency Could Mean for Safer Beauty Products Beauty brands were set to clean up their formulas under recent legislation. What will happen now? By Elizabeth Siegel and Deanna Pai December 4, 2024 Audrey Shtecinjo\/Stocksy – stock Update (December 4, 2024): The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA) was signed into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":929681,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[52],"class_list":["post-929680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-allure-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=929680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/929681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=929680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=929680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=929680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}