Organic skin care

Without a doubt, the manufacture and sale of cosmetics are big business. More than $2.5 billion is spent annually on cosmetics, largely by women, and this figure is expected to continue to grow at a rapid rate. Cosmetics are technically defined as products that are intended to make you look better. By contrast, medications applied to the skin (doctors call them topical medications) are defined as products that affect the structure or function of your skin. Although topical medications are subject to strict FDA regulation, cosmetics are not. Thus, the burden of wisely choosing cosmetics falls largely on you, the consumer.

Both the enormous variety of cosmetics available and their variations in price can make choosing the right cosmetics difficult. Literally scores of different types of cosmetics are available for use on every area of your skin, hair, and nails. Moreover, different brands of cosmetics intended for the same purposes, often containing the same organic chemical ingredients or very similar active ingredients, may vary in cost from pennies to tens of dollars for equal amounts. To make matters worse, advertisers actively compete to make their products sound like the answer to your prayers, often making wild, too-good-to-be-true claims for their products' benefits.

Happily, the FDA requires that all American cosmetic manufacturers list their products' ingredients on the label. They are also required to list those ingredients in the order of their relative amounts in the product. In other words, a particular cosmetic will contain more of those ingredients listed first on the label and less of those listed last. It almost goes without saying that by knowing something about what and how much of an ingredient goes into a particular cosmetic, you will be better equipped to make the right purchases.

Unfortunately, cosmetic ingredient labels can themselves often be confusing and occasionally misleading. For example, to protect product manufacturers from having to divulge certain trade secrets or secret formulas, cosmetic manufacturers are not required to list the names of such items as the specific fragrances or flavorings in their products. They also need not list the precise amounts of any of the ingredients in them. Moreover, the current law permits ingredients to be listed according to either their common, chemical, or trade names. Thus, one company may list an ingredient by its chemical name and another company will list that same ingredient by its common name. This creates unnecessary confusion. Because of this confusion with ingredient names, comparing products to see if they contain the same ingredients can sometimes be very difficult.

It would seem that being a smart consumer is an almost impossible job, requiring knowledge of advanced cosmetic chemistry. This is not the case. With a little background information, you can purchase cosmetics more knowledgeably and even save money.