The regulators are looking at what is in your make-up bag, and whether it could be causing you lasting harm. Here’s the technical bit (read on for the highlights):
On the 5th October the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS) issued a preliminary opinion on the safety of nanomaterials in cosmetics. Naming three common cosmetic ingredients; colloidal silver, acrylates copolymer and silica, concerns have been raised about the safety of small particles used in cosmetics and what their long-term health effects could be. Comments are invited until 2 November 2020 here: https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/consumer_safety/opinions_en
What is a Nanomaterial?
Nanomaterials are chemical substances or materials with particle sizes between 1 to 100 nanometres in at least one dimension. It includes substances of natural origin. “Natural” does not mean “non-toxic”, just think about asbestos if you are in any doubt about that.
What makes them potentially harmful?
Broadly, their small size is of concern because the behaviour of the substance may be different in small particles. For example, a small particle in a fixing powder may easily be inhaled whereas a big block of the same substance, would not.
Their shape is also of concern. A needle like shape is intrinsically more hazardous, particularly when inhaled, since it can penetrate a cell membrane and circumnavigate the natural elimination pathways (like the hairs in your nose, for example).
How they behave in the body also matters. Do they dissolve, do they breakdown, are they totally inert?
Some nanomaterials have surface modifications. Iridescence or light altering coatings can be applied to nanomaterials to make an extraordinary eye shadow, for example, but do we know what effect this coating has when it hitches a ride into your lungs on a nanoparticle? That’s really what we need to work out.
Why cosmetic use in particular?
The exposure route and frequency of exposure of cosmetics can be very direct, and very high. If you apply facial make up once a day every day, your dermal exposure is obviously high but with nanomaterials, we should also consider inhalation during application and daily wear, ocular exposure through migration to the eyes and oral ingestion via the lips. We often know less about the chemicals in cosmetics than we do for other uses, and that’s what the committee think- there’s a lack of information to base a conclusion on.
The environment
Outside of the remit of this draft opinion, we also need to consider the environment
when thinking about nanomaterials in cosmetics. We already know that there are concerns about the use of nano-form zinc oxide in sunscreens and we know that anything small which is persistent in the environment can have long-lasting detrimental effect- like microplastics in the ocean.
Although this opinion is limited to human health effects, let’s not forget the environment too.
When you take your make-up off at the end of the day, where does it go? Down the drain and into the water course? On a cotton pad and into landfill? How does the moist skin of an earthworm or octopus react to a needle shaped, insoluble nanoparticle? Perhaps we should try to work that out, even if nanomaterials are cleared for human cosmetic use.
