Nobody defines it. Two brands using the phrase can mean opposite things, because one has removed synthetics and the other has kept them and disclosed them. Which is better depends on a question most people haven’t been asked.
Congress ordered the FDA to write an asbestos testing standard for talc cosmetics. The agency proposed one in December 2024 and withdrew it in November 2025. Here’s what the testing has found in the meantime.
FDA tested 400 lip products and found an average of about 1 part per million of lead. The eyeshadows and blushes it tested ran higher. Almost nobody writes about those.
Every other ingredient we write about is a question of what it does inside your body. Mica isn’t. Mica is a question about who dug it out of the ground, and the honest answer is often a child.
We read the ingredient lists, checked who owns each label, and sorted the clean makeup that actually performs from the stuff that separates by noon. Here are the natural makeup brands worth buying.
The story that sulfates cause cancer has been circulating since the nineties and it was never true. Which is a shame, because the chain-email version buried a smaller, real problem worth knowing about.
It replaced sulfates in half the shampoos on the shelf because it’s milder. Then the American Contact Dermatitis Society named it Allergen of the Year, and the reason why turns out not to be the ingredient at all.
Women sued Unilever over hair loss they blamed on this preservative. By July 2022 it was gone from TRESemme in the US. The company never conceded the point, which tells you something on its own.
Europe has been quietly restricting a group of silicones since 2020, and the rules tighten again this year. Not because they hurt your hair. Because they don’t break down once they leave your shower.
People treat “mineral sunscreen” as one thing. It’s two ingredients that don’t do the same job, and only one of them covers the full range of UV on its own.