Cosmetics, Toiletries and Household Products

Abstract

The diverse range of raw materials used in manufacturing cosmetics, toiletries and household products is encountered by vast numbers of people over the years, irrespective of age, sex or state of health. Exposure is often prolonged and repeated frequently, in some instances throughout a major part of the lifespan, mostly without medical or other expert supervision. Such a pattern of exposure in all the more advanced countries of the world seldom, in practice, gives rise to overt safety problems of any consequence or to insidious and possibly more serious adverse effects, according to the available evidence. Predictive safety evaluation based on experimental investigation is relatively new to the scene; the earlier way of selecting ingredients by a process of trial-and-error evidently functioned remarkably well on the whole. Inevitably mistakes were made now and again. For example, distinctly hazardous substances such as arsenic, mercury and atropine found their way into cosmetics at certain times but ingredients mostly seem to have been chosen at least partly for their inherent blandness, thereby providing quite an effective safeguard.