Since the past few years, we have let chemicals encroach freely in our life. As a result of this chemical intrusion, most of our food, cosmetics and medicines, are contaminated with harmful substances as they form the basis of our modern production techniques.

Like organic food, many people are now looking towards organic cosmetics. But lack of appropriate standards for organic cosmetics has enabled many manufacturers to take advantage of the situation and mislead the consumers.

The definition of organic should be modified for organic body care products with a different set of standards. Well, what is the problem with the current organic certification system? If we talk about a 70% organic product while referring to cosmetics, the remaining 30% of that product can consist of strong chemicals. Thus many cosmetics, in which the active ingredients are strong chemicals can be labeled as organic with minor modifications in the less active ingredients, or adding them with mild organic agents.

As a cautious consumer, you always take a look at the contents apart from the organic label. Then how do the manufacturers succeed in fooling you? If you observe closely, most of the 70% organic manufacturers list the organic contents first and the harmful chemicals are listed in the end. Floral waters, and water extracts and infusions from botanical products, are listed as the prime organic contents in most of these claimed organic cosmetics. But, on the contrary, they hardly have anything in them. Floral waters are hydrosols that are basically water by-products obtained during distillation of essential oils. There is hardly an iota of essential oil in the floral waters. Can these, by any chance, be the organic cosmetics that you want to purchase?

Many companies add ingredients such as diethanolamine (DEA), cocamide DEA, and triethanolamine (TEA), which are known for causing cancer. Olefin sulfonate, cocamidopropyl betaine, sodium myreth sulfate, and paraben preservatives are also added in these products. Yet the manufacturers manage to label their products as organic because the current rules enable them to do so.

Some labels print wrong information. They add words like ‘derived from …’ to give the impression that the product is made from natural substances. Example is ‘cocamide DEA derived from coconut oil’. It might not be necessary that the cocamide DEA mentioned in the product is obtained from coconut oil only. Again lack of proper standards makes it feasible for the manufacturers to do such fraud labeling.

Some companies go an extent further in misleading the consumers. When you purchase organic cosmetics, you intend to buy the cosmetic products which have ingredients made from organic means without the use of any chemicals. However, there are companies which will label their product organic, referring to the scientific meaning of organic, that is one containing carbon in it.

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Elizabeth  - Ingredient Labels 2009-07-28 08:18:23 > ... referring to the scientific meaning of organic, ... They can only do that in the EU if there is no INCI name for that specific ingredient; if they use the scientific name instead where the INCI name is present then they are grounds for prosecution as they are breaking the law. There are reasons we must use INCI and that is because those ingredients are easily recognisable the world over and easily referenced from medical databases - this isn't the case with scientific naming. Reply

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