An Insight into Chemicals Toxicity in Cosmetics and Their Health-Related Perceptions

Abstract

ABSTRACT
Cosmetics has been used, since ancient times, for enhancing the beauty and self- care. But the difference lies in the chemicals that have been constantly used for the manufacturing of cosmetics in the present timeconcerning the natural cosmetics that were been in use in ancient civilization and still used by many people. Many controversies arose in past years targeting the companies the company to ban the use of such chemicals but none seem to lead to any result. Cosmetics manufactured today are added with a load of chemicals to increase their shelf life, to enhance their quality, for selective and assorted colors or any other desired property. But no one could have ever thought of how these would affect the humans and the environment too. The cosmetics lead to prolonged exposure to chemicals and indirect ingestion that give rise to health-related issues like allergy, hypersensitivity and some are even be reported to have carcinogenic effects. Many experimental pieces of evidence have supported the presence of substances like phthalates, coal tar, heavy metals, parabens etc. in the cosmetics. They have been reported to have dangerous impacts on biological things. Apart from this, the cosmetics are also tested on animals in such an inhuman way that can’t be imagined of and set out for sale, keeping the fact at a corner that animal and humans have different issues and body build-ups and effects won’t be the same. This also gives rise to animal related ethical issues. Safety evaluation for cosmetics needs to be updated. This review is a compilation of information from the reviewed literature related to cosmetics. More strict safety evaluation rules, banning for such harmful chemicals, giving break to excessive animal abuse in the industry and use of more and more natural products and herbal formulations should be encouraged.