Columbus Public Radio: Digging into the dirt on clean beauty

The University of Cincinnati's Kelly Dobos spoke with WOSU Public Media out of Columbus, Ohio about cosmetics that are labeled as "clean beauty" products.

Dobos said the term "clean beauty" is complicated because there is no regulatory or legal definition of what that means.

Some brands combine bits of information, or misinformation, about a product's chemical composition as a marketing ploy, Dobos said. For example, some brands tout being free of ingredients that would never be used in that product in the first place.

"A solvent-based nail polish that claims it’s paraben free is kind of silly in my opinion because we’ve never needed a preservative in that type of system for that product," said Dobos, a cosmetic chemist and adjunct instructor in UC's Cosmetic Science Program in the James L. Winkle College of Pharmacy. "So it’s an easy claim to make, but it’s not really a valid claim in my opinion, and I think it leads to more confusion in consumer markets."

Dobos said rather than saying a certain ingredient is good or bad, it is more helpful to conduct a risk assessment based on its potential to cause harm in a variety of levels of exposure.

"I drink several cups of coffee a day, safely, but we know that there are examples where if you have too much caffeine in a short period of time it can be dangerous and toxic," Dobos said. "So that hazard and risk assessment is part of what we look at with ingredients."

Dobos recommended the website CosmeticsInfo.org , a database operated by the Personal Care Products Council, as a resource to find unbiased information about ingredients and products.

Listen to the WOSU Public Media interview. (Note: Segment begins around 15:55 mark.)

Featured photo at top of makeup and brushes. Photo/July Ko/iStock.