beauty products and color in cosmetics

							                         Beauty Products, Colour & Cosmetics




Many people avoid artificial colours in their foods, but don't check out the colours in
cosmetics and beauty products. It is only in recent years that cosmetics have started to
carry a full list of ingredients on their packaging.

Making sense of the ingredients can be difficult for the lay person. This is particularly true
for colourings, which often go under the guise of numbers rather than names.

In many countries colours in cosmetics are listed as colour index numbers. C.I. numbers are
allocated by the Society of Dyers and Colourists.

The scheme covers colours used in food, personal care products, cosmetics, household
products and fabric dyeing. So, for example you will not normally see ‘tartrazine’ listed in
your lipstick ingredients, but it may be there listed as C.I. 19140. Erythrosine will be listed as
C.I. 45430, and so on.



The USA uses a different system: the FD & C colors have been categorised by the American
Food & Drink Administration for use in foods, drugs and cosmetics. So in this system
tartrazine is FD & C yellow 5, and amaranth is FD & C red 2.



The ‘E Number’ system is used by the European Community (EC). This is a system of giving
code numbers to food additives, some of which are also used in cosmetics and personal
care products. This system is also used in some other countries but without the E prefix, so
E102 becomes simply colour ‘102’.
                                Beauty products, colour and cosmetics
All this confusion for the average consumer would not be important, but for the fact that
some of these colours are known to cause problems in susceptible individuals. For example,
tartrazine (also known as FD & C Yellow 5, CI 1914 and EI02) can cause migraines, itching,
rhinitis and agitation in susceptible individuals.

Many individuals avoid its use in food, but do not realise how extensively it is used in
cosmetics, such as lipstick, and personal care products.

The big worries in terms of colours in cosmetics and personal care products are lipstick,
coloured lip balms, lip gloss and lip pencils, because anyone who uses these regularly ‘eats’
a fair quantity over their life time, but these colours also appear in skin cream, foundation,
mascara and so on too. (Remember also that these colours can also be in 'natural'
cosmetics and natural beauty products.)

Another worry is that even the 'experts' cannot agree on an international 'safe' list of
colours, so that a colour may be allowed in one country, but banned elsewhere. For
example, quinoline yellow is allowed within the European Community and in some other
countries, but is banned in Japan, Norway and the United States.

As ever, the advice is: keep yourself informed and read the label.

For more info on skincare and natural cosmetics, and to discover which pure organic
ingredient can really give your skin a luminous and lasting glow, please visit our beauty
products video.




                               Beauty products, colour and cosmetics