TABLE OF CONTENTS A chapter on regulatory issues of hair products may seem almost too simplistic for the academic scope of this book as it comes after several others focused on the safety and toxicology of hair products. These are the drivers of all hair products regulations virtually everywhere in the world, ensuring that users do not get hurt when they use hair products. Hair products, particularly those using active chemistry (for example hair colorants and permanent waves) do present important challenges to safety assessors and regulators world-wide. This chapter attempts to explain why products using complex chemistry can be safely used by millions of consumers world-wide with a fairly simple regulatory approach based on robust safety assessments.
Hair products are regulated in most of the world as cosmetics . It is important to say that the word cosmetic is often used in many languages to denote something trivial. This is not the case in regulatory terms. Regulation of cosmetics is taken very seriously by health authorities world-wide. Cosmetics are the most important category of consumer products after foods both in terms of quantity and time of exposure to humans. Regulations in this area do not generally require strict pre-marketing approval controls in most developed countries; but the level of responsibility and liability that cosmetic safety assessments involve is very similar to food and drug assessments world-wide.
Another consideration to quantify the magnitude and importance of cosmetics globally is that this market was estimated in 2003 to be...
