Most of the skin care products have a full list of the ingredients on the label, as this labelling is mandated by the Fair Packaging and Labelling Act, which also gives guidelines on the format for the listing.
Ingredients of a Skin Care Product
Skin care products as well as other cosmetics are dealt with differently than drugs when it concerns FDA regulations. When the FDA is approving a new drug for the market it will require extensive testing for safety as well as effectiveness before it is approved. Skin care products as well as their component ingredients are not subject to the same kind of rigorous testing requirements. Due to this less vigorous testing process, it is not a requirement to clearly differentiate between active as well as inactive ingredients on the label of cosmetics and the skin care products. Thus your first step while deciphering the label is to work out in case there are any proven active ingredients on the list. In case you are not sure of which active ingredients to look for, you can see the Anti aging Treatments section in this site.
Once you are sure that there are good active ingredients on the list, you need to work out if there is a high enough concentration of the active ingredients in order to make the product effective. The level of concentration is usually not listed on the label. So it is useful to know that the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act requires that ingredients be listed in order of the greatest amount to the least amount. Thus water, oil as well as other vehicles will come first followed by the other ingredients. It is unlikely that any active ingredient will be in the top two spots on the label, but in case it is at the end of a really long list, it is unlikely to have high concentration in order to be of much value. Certain active ingredients such as estrogens can be effective in trace amounts, but mostly a reasonably high level of concentration is required in order to be useful. AS an example, vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid) needs to make up at least 10 per cent of the compound in order to be of value. The position of the ingredients in the list should give a general idea regarding its concentration which in turn will give you the idea whether it will be effective or not. The best way in order to determine the concentration of active ingredients in any product is to call the company which has produced it and ask them.
But the rules of descending concentration also have some exceptions including:
- Drugs are typically listed before all the other ingredients no matter what their level of concentration. An example of a drug commonly found in skin care treatments is tretinoin, found in Retin A.
- Secret or patented formulas do not need to show what their makeup of active ingredients is but they have to submit an FDA application which lists the alias they use on the label in place of naming the exact ingredients.
- Fragrances as well as colours are usually listed last, no matter what their level of concentration is in the product.
- Any ingredient present in a concentration of less than 1% can be listed in any order but it needs to come after those ingredients which have higher concentrations. There are no rules requiring the disclosure of the 1% cut-off.
- Certain ingredients can come in multiple forms, such as Vitamin A which can be used in any product as retinal, teinol or retinyl palmitate. These would be listed as different ingredients even though they are basically the same thing.
The last thing that you should do while you look into the makeup of the ingredient list is to examine the ingredients present in the highest concentrations. Make sure that they agree with your type of skin. Stay away from things that you know can irritate your skin due to allergy or otherwise. Avoid comedogenic ingredients in case you are prone to acne. There are also certain ingredients used in skin care products which can be potentially harmful to the skin. Avoid all these at any cost. (See the section on the potentially harmful ingredients.)
In order to be really careful you could research each ingredient so that you understand its purpose as well as foibles.