Statement by Thomas Myers, EVP, Legal & Regulatory Personal Care Products Council In Response to a Recent Study about the Impact of Cosmetics and Personal Care Products on Air Quality
Washington, D.C. – “The Personal Care Products Council (PCPC) and its member companies believe it’s important for consumers to know that the State of California has for decades regulated cosmetics and personal care products for emissions, known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
“Our industry has reformulated many of its cosmetics and personal care products, utilizing low vapor pressure VOCs, fully complying with the state’s stringent clean air requirements. As a result, the amount of VOC emissions from these products has steadily decreased for more than twenty years.
“Following enactment of the California Clean Air Act in 1988, our industry immediately began working with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to develop the very first emission requirements for consumer products which include cosmetics and personal care products and we will continue to work collaboratively with CARB to ensure that the data provided by our industry helps to create the most accurate picture of VOC emissions in California as well as serve as a baseline to guide future regulation.
“To that end, CARB recently completed a 3-year survey of all consumer products in the California marketplace, collecting full ingredient information, fragrance formulas, sales information, and labeling data. It is the most comprehensive look at product VOC data in decades and will be used to update California’s VOC inventory. Since this data is still being aggregated and assessed by CARB, however, it would be premature to jump to conclusions about the actual contribution consumer products make to VOC emissions in California.”