ICMAD, along with its more than 900-member companies, has announced their support of the efforts of the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) Expert Panel and the statement issued by its executive director Bart Heldreth, Ph.D., that the claims laid out by Women’s Voices for the Earth are erroneous.
On April 24, 2018, Women’s Voices for Earth released a report which it claimed: “expose[d] the dangers both the public and manufacturers face in relying on the Cosmetics Ingredient Review (CIR) panel to provide adequate safety assessments of ingredients used in cosmetics.”
Related: ICMAD President and CEO Releases Statement on Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2018
Acknowledging that safety of ingredients and conflicts of interests are issues to be taken seriously, ICMAD maintains that personal care products and cosmetics companies have a long-standing commitment to product safety. The organization referred to CIR as “the leading scientific body dedicated to a thorough, objective and independent review” of cosmetics, with findings published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal The International Journal of Toxicology.
“We do agree that modernizations to cosmetics regulations must be made, but our focus is to ensure that the updated law continues to foster innovation, guarantee safety and keep the U.S. as a worldwide leader in the cosmetics industry,” ICMAD stated in its release. “Attacking CIR with unfounded claims is not the way to achieve true modernization of the proposed legislation.”
“The CIR is an important, invaluable and unequaled program that contributes directly to consumer safety and provides valuable assistance to FDA and the regulated cosmetic industry,” said John Bailey, Ph.D., former director of the FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors and executive vice president for science at the Personal Care Product Council. “The CIR panel of world-class experts, working for more than 40 years, provides an independent, systematic, transparent and science-based review of the safety of ingredients used in cosmetics as well as inactive ingredients in drugs. These reckless attacks on the credibility of the CIR fail to recognize the important contributions of the CIR to global cosmetic safety.”
