The Personal Care Products Safety Act Proposes Changes for Beauty Industry

A bill introduced this week could dramatically change your beauty routine. Yesterday, senators Dianne Feinstein and Susan Collins proposed The Personal Care Products Safety Act to "amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to ensure the safely of cosmetics." The bill would give the FDA far greater authority and oversight over the safety of your beauty products, The Cut reports. Currently, the beauty products you buy, from everyday items like shower gel to beauty bag staples like lipstick, undergo only the most limited, surface-level regulations from the government. Technically speaking, the FDA regulates (but does not approve) cosmetics under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, but their restrictions on concerning ingredients (such as hazardous chemicals) involve "voluntary" recalls at best, as stated on their own site.

If this new piece of legislation goes through, it would mandate far stricter regulations. For example, the FDA would have the power to recall questionably safe beauty products, evaluate a minimum of five ingredients annually for safety (currently, the list of unsafe beauty ingredients in the US is startlingly low compared to other countries), and issue regulations on good manufacturing practices across the beauty industry.

“We urgently need to update the nearly 80-year-old safety rules,” Senator Feinstein said. According to The Cut, big companies like Estée Lauder, L’Oréal, Unilever, and and Johnson & Johnson have already publically showed their support for the new bill. Here’s hoping that everyone else will follow suit in bringing some much-needed change to our beauty shelves.