Personal care products from face washes and perfumes to lotions and deodorant become part of nearly automatic routines, but with the lack of cosmetic/personal care product regulation in the U.S., these products could potentially cause unwanted effects on the body.

Heather Patisaul, an associate professor of biology at NC State, studies substances known as endocrine disruptors as part of her work and research.

Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can interfere with the body’s endocrine system (hormones) and cause developmental, neurological and reproductive issues.

Patisaul’s lab studies the ways in which endocrine disruptors can affect brain development, especially areas of the brain that are sexually dimorphic, or areas of the brain that control different functions for sexes.

These chemicals can be found in cosmetics, which are classified as anything applied to the human body for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness or altering one’s appearance. This is not the case everywhere. The European Union has cosmetics legislation that requires that all products marketed in the EU must first be registered in the Cosmetic Products Notification Portal (CPNP) before being placed on the market.

Cosmetics like hair dye and sunscreen are given special attention from regulators, and EU countries are responsible for market surveillance on a national level. The EU also bans animal testing for cosmetics. Measures can be ordered by national authorities to prevent or restrict marketing or use of a product.

In the U.S., the law does not require cosmetic products and ingredients, other than color additives, to have U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval before they go on the market. The laws and regulations that exist apply to cosmetics on the market in interstate commerce, which covers product contamination, misbranding or mislabeling. Recalls of cosmetics are only voluntary actions taken by manufacturers or distributors, and the FDA is not authorized to order recalls of cosmetics. 

Money is what gets in the way of changes in cosmetics legislation, according to Patisaul. The Feinstein-Collins Bill was introduced in 2015 in a push to strengthen the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

“The Feinstein Bill is actually supported by some pretty large cosmetics companies, and the reason they support it is because the United States is one of the only countries that has no [cosmetics] rules,” Patisaul said. “L’oreal and all these other cosmetics manufacturers make different formulations already and they sell them in Europe, and lots and lots and lots of other places. It’s very easy for them to sell you products that have fewer toxins in them. They’re already making them.”

The reason that companies in the U.S. don’t use the same EU-company formulations is that the U.S. formulation is cheaper, according to Patisaul.

“I think there needs to be stricter regulations about products available to consumers because these products can damage not only skin and hair but also cause health issues,” said Anirudh Bhateja, a junior studying mechanical engineering. “I use solely natural products and products without sulfates because I know how bad these chemicals are for you, but most people typically just go with a cheap option which usually contains all these harmful chemicals.”

Patisaul said some of the substances in the U.S. formulations of cosmetic products can potentially cause changes in the body if absorbed into the bloodstream, which can occur through the skin. How easily a substance can be absorbed through the skin depends on characteristics like the size of the molecule, its charge and whether it’s polar or nonpolar. 

“The issue with personal care products versus a food container is that if your food container leeches a chemical into your food and you eat it, it’s going to get metabolized so anything that you eat is going to get metabolized very quickly, because you’re in the digestive system,” Patisaul said. “Some chemicals get rapidly metabolized to an inert compound and you excrete it and it never gets into your bloodstream, but for personal care products, if you’re putting it on your skin or your face it’s just getting directly absorbed and it’s not getting metabolized before it hits the bloodstream.”

There are known existing chemicals that can interact with hormones like testosterone, estrogen and thyroid hormones, and the big question for science is whether your exposure to these chemicals is high enough to give you some sort of risk or health effect, according to Patisaul.

“When you use different products every day, you’re not just exposed to one, you’re exposed to lots of them, so maybe a little bit of this chemical that interferes with estrogen and a little bit of this one — does all that add up and cause a significant disruption,” Patisaul said. “The reason that deodorant has been in the news is because deodorant contains a class of chemicals called parabens and parabens interfere with estrogen and they also interfere with androgen and because women are putting deodorant under their armpits — so it’s on your skin and you absorb it into your skin and right underneath that skin are the lymph nodes that feed in from the breast.”

Patisaul said a research group in Canada found traces of parabens in breast cancer tissues, further suggesting a possible but not yet confirmed link between breast cancer and deodorant.

Doing a long term studies involving people is very difficult, but there are labs that do conduct this kind of research, and Patisaul collaborates with them. A retrospective method of research involves asking people how old they were when they started using a kind of product and look at health effects to try to draw associations that way. The prospective research method is harder but more accurate. Health effects are measured now and then health effects are measured again for associations when the person reaches a certain age.

As with all product use, there is a time and a place for everything and products may affect different people differently. For example, Patisaul describes how you wouldn’t give beers to a 3-year-old, but how alcohol affects the child will be really different from how it may affect a 30-year-old man.

“With synthetic chemicals we have to ask the same things,” Patisaul said. “Is there a situation where in baby products you want to be super, super cautious and not have a lot of these endocrine disruptors in there, whereas maybe for some other products that are not geared for kids we can have trace levels of some of these things and not be crazy about it. Finding that balance is challenging and that’s the scientific space that I like to be in — trying to figure out the mechanisms, because if we understand the mechanisms we can also design better products.”

Navigating complicated compound names on packaging and knowing what to be more concerned about can be difficult for consumers, but there are ways to simplify choosing products. Databases of products such as one called Skin Deep contain information about any potentially concerning chemicals and give a rating to the product where low numbers are of lower concern and higher numbers are of higher concern.

As for the future of cosmetic regulations, change in companies is economically driven and if they can make money by changing behavior, they will change according to Patisaul. Other things that citizens can do is try to become aware of issues and call their senator and ask them to support specified bill(s) in Congress. 

“Without some regulatory teeth, we don’t get the safest things,” Patisaul said.