Survey and health assessment of cosmetic products ... - Miljøstyrelsen

2 Definitions
2.1 Cosmetic products without/with natural preservatives
The project deals with cosmetic products marketed as either without
preservatives or with only natural preservatives. The cosmetic products are
divided into two categories that are used throughout the project:
1. Non-preserved products = Products marketed as
a. Not containing preservatives 1
2. Naturally-preserved products = Products marketed as
a. Not containing chemical preservatives
b. Not containing synthetic preservatives
c. Only containing natural preservatives
d. Not containing artificial preservatives
I.e., the term ”natural preservatives” in this report, is a common designation
for preservatives, marketed as ”natural”, ”non-chemical”, ”non-synthetic”,
”non-artificial”.
As mentioned earlier, products marketed as e.g. “free of parabens” etc. are
not dealt with or are not a part of the investigated products.
All types of liquid cosmetic products are included in the investigation, e.g.
shampoos, tooth paste, eye cream, soap etc.
2.2 Preservatives, antimicrobial, antiseptic, antibacterial
EU’s INCI list – the EU CosIng (Cosmetic Ingredients & Substances)
database (INCI, EU) operates with two functions of substances that have
some kind of preserving effects. These are:
� “Preservative” – defined as “Inhibits primarily the development of
micro-organisms in cosmetics. All preservatives listed are substances
on the positive list of preservatives (Annex VI of the Cosmetics
Directive)”.
� “Antimicrobial” – defined as “Helps control the growth of microorganisms
on the skin”. (CosmeticInfo.org 2
defines antimicrobials as
“materials that protect against the growth of microorganisms in
personal care products, including bacteria, viruses and fungi” and
describes that “antimicrobial ingredients play an important role in
making sure that potential care products are free of microorganisms
during storage and after they are opened. They are effective at low
levels so it does not take much of the ingredient to work”).
1
Or other similar statements like ”free from preservatives”, “without preservatives”,
etc.
2
http://www.cosmeticsinfo.org/HBI/13/
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