According to FDA regulations, if a product is intended to be applied to a person’s body to make the person more attractive, it’s a cosmetic under the law, for instance perfumes, colognes and aftershave should all be regulated as cosmetics. However, some products add fragrances for therapeutic purposes, such as aromatherapy products that could relieve muscle pain or headaches, and fragrance products that help sleep. These kind of fragrance products are generally regulated as pharmaceuticals. Other products that may contain fragrance ingredients, but are not applied to the body, including detergent, fabric softener and carpet freshenerare, are under the administration of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

On September 27, 2023, ECHA was mandated to prepare an Annex XV report for possible restriction of chromium substances (CrVI). ECHA should submit a restriction proposal by October 4, 2024. This restriction proposal intends to improve the effectiveness and management of chromium (VI) substances in the European Union.

On October 20, 2023, China’s Ministry of Commerce and the General Administration of Customs jointly issued an announcement regarding the temporary export control measures on graphite materials. Some materials will be subject to export control, and three highly sensitive graphite materials including spherical graphite, which were previously subject to temporary control, will be included in the list of dual-use items for export control. Moreover, temporary control measures on five low-sensitivity graphite materials primarily used in industries such as steel, metallurgy, and chemicals, including carbon electrodes of a kind used for furnaces, will be removed. The control measures take effect on December 1, 2023.

On September 26, 2023, the Commission on Constitution, Justice and Citizenship (CCJC) in Brazil published PL 6120/2019. Eariler on May 9, 2023, CCJC approved the bill (PL 6120/2019) and has send it to the Federal Senate for further consideration. PL 6120/2019 proposes to set up a national chemical inventory as a national database to collect the information on chemicals imported or manufactured in Brazil with hazard characteristics. If PL 6120/2019 is approved, Brazil will be the fourth country in South America that have chemical management regulations, following Peru, Chile, and Colombia.

On October 4, 2023, in accordance with the Act on the Registration and Evaluation of Chemicals, the National Institute of Environmental Research in Korea released Notice No. 2023-460 on revision of Classification and Labeling Regulations for Chemical Substances.

The US Food and Drug Administration has published a Structured Product Labeling (SPL) Implementation Guide with Validation Procedures. Cosmetic product facility registrations and product listings are now included within the SPL framework. The Implementation Guide can be used to develop SPL authoring tools. In the future, once FDA begins accepting data, users may transmit SPL-formatted submissions through FDA’s Electronic Submissions Gateway (ESG), or SPL authoring software including Xforms, for cosmetic product facility registrations and product listings, mandated by the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 (MoCRA).

For a long time, there has been ambiguity regarding whether capsule forms are allowed for common food. The industry generally holds the view that capsules are commonly seen in health and pharmaceutical products, yet not suitable for common food. Consequently, few capsule-type common food products have been imported into China through general trade. It is anticipated that more of these products will enter the Chinese market following this notice.

We have collected the latest FAQs on ordinary cosmetics filing from the Guangzhou Administration for Market Regulation and translated them into English for your reference.

Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs) stand as a vital category of naturally occurring nutrients found in breast milk. Currently, there are over 200 known structures of HMOs, with 6 types being extensively researched, of which the nutritional necessity and safety have gained broad international recognition. Notably, in China, there’s widespread attention on four compliant HMOs: 2’-fucosyllactose (2’-FL), lacto-N-neotetraose (LNnT), 6’-sialyllactose sodium salt (6’-SL), and 3’-sialyllactose sodium salt (3’-SL).

On October 4, 2023, the National Institute of Environmental Research (NIER) in South Korea published Notice No. 2023-459 on the revision of the Designated Toxic Substances, to strengthen the administration of toxic substances.