These pages list over 6,000 cosmetic ingredients. About one third of these are known to have harmful effects or are manufactured in such a way that they could contain harmful contaminents. We have listed over 2,000 ingredients in 'Cosmetics Unmasked', including all of the potentially harmful chemicals and many of the more commonly used cosmetic ingredients. Clearly, in a book of 404 pages it is impossible to include all 6,000+ ingredients, therefore, if an ingredient is not listed it means that it has no currently known harmful effects and its use in cosmetics is not restricted in any way, or it may be a new ingredient which we have not yet investigated. The international chemical hazard symbol indicates that there is a potential risk associated with this ingredient. It could be a small risk (e.g. there may be a risk of contamination with harmful by-products which are formed during manufacture) or a more serious risk (e.g. it has been reported to cause allergic reactions or adverse skin reactions in some individuals, or it could be potentially toxic or carcinogenic). Ingredients which have EU Commission or FDA restrictions on their use are also marked with this symbol. The omission of this symbol does not imply that an ingredient is safe for all individuals. For full details of these particular ingredients and many more, read Cosmetics Unmasked. Treat the list like a phone book rather than a dictionary. Chemical names often have more than one word. Look up whole words first. For example, 'Ethyl urocanate' will come before 'Ethylparaben' in the same way that 'Williams Tom' will come before 'Williamson Adam' in the phone book. Numbers and punctuation come before letters of the alphabet so '2,5-Diaminoanisole' will come before '2-Aminobutanol'. For the same reason, 'o-Phenylphenol' will come before 'Oak moss' because the '-' in 'o-Phenylphenol' comes before the 'a' in 'Oak'. In other words you must persevere. If you cannot find an ingredient try looking further up and down the list. 'Cosmetics Unmasked also contains a complete glossary which explains exactly what emulsifers, film formers, surfactants, etc. are.

Alphabetical lists of Cosmetic Ingredients starting with:
Please be patient. These are long lists that may take a few seconds to load.
(5591 Ingredients on pages 1-9 through L, P and S are currently complete. Others to follow shortly.)

© Gina & Steve Antczak, 2001

This page was last updated, 17 June 2002

CosmeticsUnmasked.Com