If any other industry was allowed to sell products with the utter disregard for truth and false advertising that the cosmetics industry practises they would be fined for fraudulent advertising.

Why are they exempt from laws and regulations that govern the selling of other consumer products.

I recently read a book written by Paula Gedoun who has done a huge investigation of cosmetic companies and their products. Actually doing chemical analazis of hundreds of well known cosmetic brands and their contents. She also has compiled a dictionary of all the ingredients and chemicals found in most cosmetics and their benefits or otherwise. She states and dates actual studies done outside the cosmetic industry to back up her information.

Dermatologically tested, which is often stated on cosmetics means that they have asked a dermatologist to rub some cream on their face and say if they liked it, it does not mean studies have been done.

Also bear in mind that the chemists that the cosmetics industries employ to make up their potions are on good salaries paid by the companies and they are not about to blow any whistle that might kill the goose that lays the golden egg for them.

Their are some good products out there but they are few and far between and if they do contain much real benefit they are extremely overpriced.

Now with their use of these unstudied potentially quite harmful nano-technologies creeping into all their products their callous disregard for the consuming public may just come back to bite them in the form of expensive law suits.
The cosmetics industry needs to lift their game and sell genuine products without the lies and profiteering.
I thought there were laws against false advertising.

What a fatuous beat up.

The fact that BS noticed an increased corrosion from handprints probably has nothing whatsoever to do with nano particles. Any cream or lotion (even cold cream which is just oil and water) will change the chemical conditions under which the bonding operates and would accelerate corrosion.

Any new product for human consumption has to go through rigourous safety testing. The trial that shows that TiO2 can cross the placenta means that pregnant women should be discouraged from drinking the sunscreen.

As titanium oxide (Ti02) bonds to the skin, which is later shed, the absorbtion through the skin is so small as to be unmeasureable. The tiny percentage of that crossing a placenta is not going to do any damage.

This is the next tech advance that the greens are going to rally around. Their fears of GMO now appear to be unfounded after decades of safe trials.

When will these morons realise that new is not always bad, and that the cosmetic companies realise that poisoning customers is a fast track to bankruptcy.

Shadow Minister, I am relieved that testing has been done on these nanotechnologies as I will now keep using my zinc sunscreen without doubts. Nanotechnologies aside, the cosmetics companies are still guilty of false advertising and claims for their products. Since they have been only required to list the active ingredients in moisturiziers containing sunscreens quite a few of them have stopped listing the other ingredients in their products. They may say the product contains vitamin E but unless you can actually read an ingredient list and see if vitamin E is listed at the top there could very possibly be very little actual Vitamin E in the product. This is what Paula Gedoun discovered when she tested a lot of cosmetics, despite their claims of this wonderful ingredient or that wonderful vitamin in the products there was in fact miniscule amounts of any benefit in them. ( There were good exceptions.)

Couldn't they be made to actually list the percentage of the vitamins and beneficial ingredients in their products especially when they want to charge anything from $50.00 to $150.00 for something that has not more vitamin E or C or Soy extract or whatever than a product that may only cost $10.00.

They make claims of having done years of research into a new ingredient. Can they back the results up with any outside studies done independantly of the cosmetic industires. The ingredients supposedly having had years of research done on them and hailed as new breakthroughs often contain the same old ingredients they've used for years with something as mundane as soy extract added to them. Hardly worth the claim of 50years research as one recent cosmetic add on Television claimed or the extreme overpriceing with the supposedly new launch. As a consumer I want to know what the hell I am paying good money for and I would like the cosmetics industries to be required to spell it out more honestly and clearly.

Thanks for a timely article, Georgia.

As someone who's largely switched to more natural alternatives but who still uses some Revlon and Body Shop products, I find it alarming to know these companies are using nanotechnology and yet there is no warning for consumers.

I must say Anita Roddick would be turning in her grave. What a sellout of the principles on which she built the Body Shop name and its once enviable reputation.

Nanotechnology essentially recognises that if you make things small enough their properties change. The invention of the label "nano technology" does not mean that this is new, just that there is more focus on the field.

Nature has been employing nanotechnology for eons in products such as milk, blood, soil, and pretty much most structures in the body.

Colloids were the first human manufactured nanotech products such as cold cream. (an emulsion of oil and water)

If it was given a more sanitised name such as homeopology the new age nuts might embrace it.