Skin deep

From January, health-conscious consumers will get a helping hand in the form of a new standard for organic cosmetics. Called Cosmos, it consolidates six of Europe’s leading organic certifiers. Over the next few years, the aim is that all organic cosmetics—from make-up and skincare to hair products—will make the switch.

Why should we care? Because, says Martyn Cole at the Soil Association, unlike organic food, organic skincare is a non-regulated industry—meaning that almost any product can claim to be organic. And it’s a growing sector despite the global recession; the organic beauty market in Britain was worth £17m at the start of 2009.

Yet, in truth, worrying about the cocktails of chemicals in our bathroom cupboard is largely a waste of time and money. Plenty of people are concerned about the damage that chemicals can do to their health; new mothers are particularly susceptible, shunning conventional products and smothering their newborns with organic olive oil—even though they can’t afford it and it makes their baby smell like a salad. The organic industry plays into these irrational impulses: eco-entrepreneur Jill Barker, founder of the Green Baby shops and website, even goes as far as to say that if you can’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin.

This is an absurd view, and one that only makes parents feel guilty if their children need steroids or paraffin-based emollient creams for skin conditions like eczema. Science does not support the idea that what goes on your skin penetrates your body in the same way as food does. “Cosmetics are formulated with precision to remain on top of the skin,” says Jon Edwards of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The effects of cosmetics are to the epidermis, cells on the outer surface of skin. For something to penetrate any deeper, it would need to be injected—raising the question of whether it was a medicine, not a cosmetic, in which case it would be subject to the same approval processes as drugs. What’s more, there’s no evidence at all to prove the statistic most often used by natural skincare brands that “up to 60 per cent of what goes on to the skin can be absorbed into the bloodstream.”

The problem, according to the British Association of Dermatologists, is that we have come to believe that natural is better. “Many toxic chemicals are ‘natural,’ and while these won’t ever make it into skincare products, it does show that some marketing terms don’t translate into better or safer products,” says spokeswoman Rebecca Freeman. Anything sold on British shelves, she points out, has been rigorously tested by the Cosmetic Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA), a legal requirement whether a product is organic or not. Even Martyn Cole, a chemist who previously helped formulate products for high-street chain Space NK, admits it is wiser to argue the green benefits of organic skincare rather than the health ones.

So why do intelligent people continue to fork out for expensive products, some of which don’t even work as well as conventional equivalents? Partly because parents lose sight of science in the face of anxiety over their children. They will avoid chemicals that sound unfamiliar, whether or not they have been proven safe, just in case they turn out to have links with cancer and infertility. Yet chemicals with complicated names—both good and bad—are part of daily life. If you live in an urban area with grimy, polluted streets, the chemicals that you and your little darlings inhale on a daily basis make worrying about a fraction of sodium lauryl sulphate in a baby shampoo redundant. As the charity Sense About Science puts it: “You cannot lead a chemical-free life because everything is made of chemicals… there are no alternatives, just choices about which ones to use and how they are made.”

Cole admits that “many natural products are still sold on the fear factor.” But this is changing, he says: the new Cosmos standard marks the start of tighter regulation and better information about the environmental benefits of organic skincare. With any luck this will stop parents spouting unproven scare stories about parabens and phthalates. But as yet Cosmos will only help the fraction of consumers who commit to “green” products. What the EU really should do is provide sensible information about conventional ones. They’re perfectly safe—just don’t eat them.