‘Free from’ claims are held to be controversial by many members of the personal care industry. While some within the industry believe that it is entirely valid to make specific claims on the absence of ingredients that have been very closely scrutinised and judged to be safe by independent scientific experts, others see such claims as wrongly/unfairly denigrating products that still contain these materials.
The scientific debate on parabens started in earnest in 2004 with the publication of a study claiming to have detected intact parabens in human breast tumours.1 It now appears to have largely subsided, as those who argue either that the study was deeply flawed in its conclusions or that it failed to prove any link to breast cancer (or both) have moved on to other things. (The critical claim that the authors detected intact parabens in human breast tumours can be demonstrated to be highly questionable, at best.) The debate moved away from the science many years ago, and has long been in the realm of emotive, unscientific dogma about the dangers of synthetic substances, often being used purely as a marketing ploy to make the products in question appear to be more safe. Many, if not most, adverse claims made about parabens now go unchallenged, no matter how ridiculous the claim. Despite a continuing absence of evidence of any hint of a link between parabens and cancer of any mind, such claims continue to be made in certain circles. There are even claims that parabens can make you fat. The latter stems from the extremely weak oestrogenic activity of butylparaben, and is automatically extrapolated to all parabens, although to suggest that even butylparaben can make you fat is ludicrous!
Negative marketing and misinformation
There has been an increasing trend towards promoting ‘paraben free’ products (among several other ‘free from’ claims) and, in some cases, the list of ‘free froms’ is longer than the INCI lists of many of the products on offer. One major retailer in the UK has ‘free from parabens and SLS’, not only on the products themselves, but on the in-store promo boards. As an interesting aside, on two occasions, in different stores, on being asked about the issue with parabens, the enquirer was told, unequivocally, that they cause cancer. A major multinational company recently posted a promo video on Facebook and other social media, entitled: “For the paraben-hating mermaids amongst us”. Engaging with Facebook users making comments on the video highlighted to me the complete lack of scientific understanding of many consumers seeing these unnecessarily emotive promotions.
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