Natural cosmetics
More and more consumers today have begun to shun cosmetics that are laden with chemicals and are opting instead for natural cosmetics. There is a reason for this shift in choice and that is that people are more concerned about their health as compared to anytime in the past. The only real trouble is that the standards of labeling are still not up to par and in fact there is no real definition of the term natural as far as the cosmetics business goes and so it is not easy to be certain as to what are natural cosmetics and what are not.
FD&C Classifications
The Federal, Food and Cosmetic Act or FD&C of 1938 does classify US products as being cosmetic only if such products help to improve or even change a person s appearance without making any difference to their physical structures or even body systems; all other products are classified as being either drugs or cosmetics.
The sad part is that the FD&C does not monitor the ingredients that make up cosmetics and so the very term natural cosmetics can be interpreted in different ways and lack of regulation or definition exposes the consumer to all kinds of products that claim to be natural cosmetics but which in fact could not be all that natural.
This should make an ordinary consumer wonder just how natural are these so-called natural cosmetics? Most natural cosmetics are at present being made from very basic materials which include ground minerals and also pigments derived from the crust of the Earth. The sad part is that many chemicals too are being added including those such as sodium lauryl sulfate and propylene glycol and more. Worse still, there are also many artificial fragrances that are being added that can make what we think are natural cosmetics anything but natural.
To qualify as natural cosmetics it is necessary that cosmetics not have any of the above mentioned ingredients and should instead contain natural minerals and botanical extracts and some essential oils as well as nature based preservatives. Last but not least, the order in which the ingredients are used in natural cosmetics must be taken into account in order to find out the concentration levels of different products.
The general opinion among discerning users of cosmetics is that natural mineral cosmetics are the best kind of cosmetics for a person s skin. The sad part is that many females do not understand the uses of such cosmetics and so they continue using cosmetics with artificial ingredients in them and the main reason for this is the price factor.
