The Truth About “Clean” Beauty

The Beauty Lab’s scientists cut through the confusion around the craze, separating fact from myth so you can make the right choices for your life.

The latest beauty buzzword: “clean.”

Along with other terms like “green” and “natural,” it’s used to describe everything from moisturizer to makeup. People are more concerned than ever about health and the environment, and it’s leading us to question what’s actually in the products we apply directly to our skin.

The dirty secret

Despite a booming beauty industry, U.S. laws for cosmetics safety are virtually unchanged since they were created back in 1938. Here — unlike in Canada and Europe, where well over 1,300 unsafe ingredients are banned for use in beauty products — unbelievably, the FDA has prohibited only 11 ingredients or related compounds. While legislation is pending to change this, progress is slow. The Personal Care Products Safety Act, supported by GH and beauty-industry leaders, would require the FDA to review the safety of at least five ingredients per year (at which rate it could take hundreds of years to even test for risks and dangers!). Yet this small step has remained stalled in the Senate since it was proposed in 2015. And there is no established industry-wide definition for “clean” or “natural” claims.

So what does “clean” beauty really mean?

Brands use the term to signal that products don’t contain certain ingredients (natural or synthetic) that they consider controversial or unsafe, like parabens. The problem is, without regulation, anything can be called “clean” — whether proven unsafe or not.

6 KEY CLAIMS, DECODED

The Beauty Lab helps you decipher the most common lingo on packaging and in marketing.

NATURAL OR ALL NATURAL