Most people applying make-up probably don’t stop to ponder how hazardous the swipes of lipstick or mascara might be. But beauty products are chemical concoctions, formulated to cover skin blemishes or stick to eyelashes for hours without running, clinging on through a sweaty night out dancing or a weepy movie. To give cosmetics this durability and water resistance, some manufacturers use a group of substances commonly known as “forever chemicals”, or PFAS.
There are thousands of distinct compounds in the PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) group and all are synthetically manufactured chemicals that contain links between carbon and fluorine atoms. The carbon-fluorine bond is one of the strongest in organic chemistry and it gives PFAS some interesting properties. They repel both water and fats and tolerate heat, which means they are stain-resistant, grease-resistant and waterproof. This in turn makes them useful in a wide range of applications, including food packaging, non-stick cookware, electronics, refrigerants, stain-proof or waterproof textiles – and cosmetics.
But the strength of this bond also means PFAS don’t break down easily. Instead, they build up in the environment and accumulate in our bodies. For some PFAS compounds, evidence of health risks emerged as early as the 1980s, albeit not publicly, associating high levels of exposure with certain cancers, birth defects and thyroid or immune malfunction. Research to determine the health impacts of lower exposures – such as through regular use of PFAS-containing beauty and personal care products – is continuing, but their persistence in the environment has prompted regulators in the US and Europe to propose bans on their use.
This has led our Environmental Protection Authority to propose a blanket ban on their use in all cosmetics, with a phase-out in locally manufactured or imported products by the end of 2025. Shaun Presow, the EPA’s manager of hazardous substances reassessments, says the proposal reflects the agency’s responsibility to act in a precautionary manner.
The proposed ban is part of several changes to the EPA’s group standard for cosmetics – its process for approving substances under the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act. Public submissions have been assessed and a final decision is due out early next year.
“We know it’s going to happen,” says Martha Van Arts, general manager of Cosmetics New Zealand, which represents brands, manufacturers, ingredients suppliers and importers. “We’re supportive of a ban. But we don’t want to be ahead of Europe, which is globally considered the best regulatory framework for cosmetics.”
Most of Cosmetics NZ’s 148 members are local, small to medium enterprises. Only a few multinationals are on its membership list, though global brands make up almost 90% of products sold here.
The local industry generates more than $150 million in exports and the market is worth about $1.5 billion in total retail-value sales. New Zealand-made brands account for as much as 25% of market share in some product types. None of the domestic makers use PFAS, says Van Arts.
In its submission on the proposed ban, Cosmetics NZ emphasises the European Union is still working through a similar proposal and this country is a small market at the end of most major brands’ logistics chains. The implementation of a ban here should therefore have a longer time frame, except for specific PFAS with confirmed health risks.
Presow agrees NZ-made cosmetics are most likely already PFAS-free. But some imported products will contain PFAS, possibly more than one. A 2021 study screened hundreds of global brands and products sold in the US and Canada for fluorine, as a proxy for the presence of PFAS. Categories with the highest percentage of high-fluorine products were foundations (63%), eye products (58%), mascaras (47%, particularly waterproof mascara), and lip products (55%, particularly liquid lipsticks). These were commonly advertised as “wear-resistant” to water and oils or “long-lasting”. Of 29 products investigated in more detail to identify specific PFAS, all contained detectable levels of at least four. One product contained 13 individual PFAS chemicals.
A BBC investigation published in January revealed that several major global beauty brands available in the UK continue using PFAS. This was based on a survey carried out by the UK’s Environment Agency, which identified nine PFAS but refused to publish the brand names. The BBC journalists scoured the ingredients lists of thousands of popular products and found PFAS in items by Revolution, Inglot and Urban Decay, which is owned by L’Oréal. (All brands told the BBC they were aiming to phase out PFAS.)
During New Zealand’s EPA consultation process, there was no direct opposition to a ban, but several industry submissions listed concerns about the timing of its implementation. However, the EPA decided to retain the end-of-2025 deadline for a phase-out. In an acknowledgement of the timing concerns, the proposal allows an extra year – until the end of 2026 – to give shops time to sell any PFAS-containing products already on the shelves.
Unfortunate substitution
Although long-term health risks are clearer for some PFAS than others, Presow says the EPA is proposing a blanket ban. “Our concern with the PFAS group is that if we ban a certain list where the risks are better known, we will get a situation … where manufacturers will use another PFAS, about which less is known, and we may be dealing with this problem again five years down the track when more becomes known about that specific substance.”
This tactic is known as “unfortunate substitution” and it has happened before with Bisphenol A (BPA) in drinking bottles, says Sally Gaw, an environmental chemistry professor at the University of Canterbury.
The use of BPA remains unregulated here but many companies phased out BPA-containing drink bottles and baby products after research showed exposure can disrupt the body’s hormone-signalling system. But the replacements later turned out to be just as concerning, Gaw says. “The polycarbonate went from BPA to BPS to BPC and a whole range of them. Often, if you take out one when you don’t like its toxicity profile, you replace it with one you know even less about, and it could be more hazardous than the one you’ve just replaced.”
Gaw welcomes the PFAS ban – and its timing – to avoid New Zealand becoming a dumping ground for products that can no longer be sold elsewhere. “If Europe goes that way, we need to go that way or we’re going to end up with a whole lot of stuff that’s considered quite undesirable.”
As a chemist, she appreciates the usefulness of the various PFAS compounds, but says it’s time to rein in their use. “I make my synthetic chemist colleagues grumpy. Yes, we can do all these great things [with PFAS], but we are really going to have to figure out what’s a good and appropriate use and what’s not.”
Clean beauty
Cosmetics is an umbrella term for more than just make-up. It includes sunscreens, shampoos, toothpastes and dental floss, shaving creams and many other personal hygiene and care products.
According to Cosmetics Europe, 72% of consumers consider these products important in their daily lives. On average, people use seven different products each day (nine for women), younger people (aged 18‒24) use as many as 16 products weekly and men’s use of skincare products and fragrances is on the rise.
Papamoa-based make-up artist Sophie Garth decided a decade ago to use only products that hadn’t been tested on animals. Now, she is shifting to clean beauty brands. For her, this means they have to be PFAS-free and use circular-economy principles to deal with packaging waste and emissions.
She says her clients are often unaware that PFAS may still be used in cosmetics and she welcomes the proposed ban as an incentive for brands to start reformulating their ingredients. “People come to me for efficacy and long-lasting make-up and the reality is that doesn’t exist in clean beauty. You cannot get a 16-hour foundation or a 24-hour mascara because the only way to make them last that long, at the moment, is through PFAS.”
Although the industry’s earlier shift to cruelty-free products was clearly defined as a move away from animal testing and could be verified easily, the current “clean beauty” branding is more fuzzy, says product designer Stacey Fraser, who specialises in chemical formulations. As a judge for this year’s “in-cosmetics Asia” show, an industry competition focused on ingredients, she has observed a strong shift away from PFAS and any other chemicals of concern. “All major ingredient companies are constantly looking for alternatives to these ingredients that could be problematic or have just fallen out of favour with consumers.”
In New Zealand, it is mandatory to list all ingredients included in concentrations of more than 1% in products, and all colours, flavours and fragrances found at concentrations below 1%. But it can be difficult even for chemists to glean information about PFAS from labels. Garth says the onus should be on brands because “the consumer trusts the cosmetics companies to be on top of this and to be safe”.
Presow says responsible companies are already moving to reformulate their cosmetics to remove PFAS. “It’s very clear in the EU that this is on the way out. And there are a lot of alternatives for these specific properties that cosmetics manufacturers are looking for.”
Garth expects consumer pressure will eventually push brands to change, just as it did with cruelty-free products. “I’m not telling you to throw out everything you’ve got. But when it’s used up, look at your local brands and where your money will be going and factor that in rather than just the right colour or efficacy.”
Toxic slip:
From Teflon on, manufacturers were aware of health issues with PFAs.
Sally Gaw still remembers her mother buying a couch coated with the anti-stain product Scotchguard. This and Teflon were the first PFAS-based products to become commercially available during the 1950s, made by the two largest PFAS manufacturers, DuPont and 3M. Back then, the chemicals were promoted as “inert”.
This year, US researchers published an analysis of industry documents that shows the companies knew by 1970 that PFAS chemicals were “highly toxic when inhaled and moderately toxic when ingested”, but their toxicity was not publicly established until the late 1990s.
Two of the most comprehensively studied PFAS, perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), have since been banned globally, but the researchers say their persistence in the environment means exposure continues, albeit at declining levels, even after their phase-outs (PFOS was banned in 2002 in the US and PFOA in 2015).
In Europe, exposure to the two substances, measured in blood serum, has dropped consistently over the past decade, likely as a result of regulatory action. Now the EU is considering a wider phase-out of all PFAS following a proposal by five countries – Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden – to restrict the chemicals in consumer products by 2025 and across all uses by 2030.
In Canada, the PFAS that are frequently measured in the environment and have been shown to have health implications, including PFOA and PFOS and any compounds that degrade to produce them, are prohibited. And in the US, California has introduced a new law to ban 13 PFAS specifically from personal care and beauty products. The California Toxic-Free Cosmetic Act was signed into law in 2021 and will come into force in 2025.
Here, the Environmental Protection Authority’s proposed PFAS ban in cosmetics follows earlier changes to regulations on firefighting foams, prompted by a 2017 investigation that found stores of foams containing the banned PFOS at 166 sites in New Zealand, including airports, sites controlled by a major oil company and at a tyre company.
Both PFOS and PFOA are listed in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. In 2006, the EPA excluded PFOS firefighting foams from its regulations, meaning the chemical could no longer be imported. In 2011, the Stockholm Convention listing was written into our Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act, banning the use of PFOS products completely. PFOA followed suit in 2020, with exemptions for photographic coatings applied to specialist films and restricted use of fire-fighting foams already in the country.
For Gaw, one of the most frustrating aspects is that even if consumers and regulators try to do the right thing, PFAS turns up in new products, often brought to market to replace other polluting items. PFAS-containing paper straws, introduced to replace plastic straws, are the latest example of such an unfortunate substitution.
