Before being placed on the market in the European Union, every cosmetic product must undergo a rigorous and meticulous safety assessment.
According to the law, a human health safety assessment shall be prepared taking into account the toxicological and chemical characteristics of the ingredients. The degree of exposure to the individual components of the product shall also be analysed.
The safety assessment is carried out for the finished cosmetic product, which means that no changes can be made to it afterwards. Any modification to the composition of the cosmetic product (even the smallest one) imposes the obligation to carry out a new safety assessment.
After the report has been drawn up, the product must be registered in the European cosmetics database, the so-called CPNP portal (cosmetic product notification portal). Only after passing these procedures can cosmetic products be legally marketed (in all countries belonging to the European Union).
Non-compliance with these steps risks very high fines for cosmetics manufacturers, which are expected to be up to 100,000 pln from the beginning of 2019.
The safety report of the finished product consists of a number of rather complicated steps:
- assessment of the regulatory compliance of the product formulation,
- toxicological analysis of the ingredients,
- exposure assessment, called exposure assessment,
- risk analysis of the ingredients,
- evaluation of the test results of the finished product,
- prepare the safety assessment report of the tested product.
The Safety Assessor also carries out the safety assessment on the basis of information received from the manufacturer (product composition, specifications for individual ingredients and test results for the finished product). In addition, the Safety Assessor uses all available toxicological literature, including toxicological databases.