FDA to Publish Adverse Events of Cosmetics

The American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to publish all cases reported to its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) and update the cases every three months. Between 2004 and 2016, consumers, physicians, and industry submitted reports of more than 50,000 adverse events, 4,322 of them related to cosmetics. In their blog, Susan Mayne, the director of CFSAN and Katherine Vierk, the director of the Division of Public Health Informatics and Analytics state that they want to use the reports to warn consumers about potential dangers. The published data can create the foundation for regulatory measures and, in some cases, even result in the complete removal of a product from the market.

The initial response from representatives of the cosmetics industry was positive. Nevertheless, Lisa Powers of the Personal Care Products Council (PCPC), warns that the data must be used with caution. Many reports are relatively trivial and deal only with the color of a product or its packaging. Such matters have nothing to do with product quality and do not create any negative results for human health.

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