2005 Preservatives Use: Frequency Report and Registration

The last frequency of use report on preservatives was published two years ago1 and nearly 20 percent more formulations have been registered since then. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) compiles this data from registrations submitted through the Voluntary Cosmetic Registration Pro-gram (VCRP), which is important for various safety and compliance reasons, as will be discussed. Table 1 shows the current listing by predominance and compares the new list to the last report (2005 compared to 2003). Table 2 describes the use of alcohol. It is important to note that brucine is prohibited in the European Union (EU), so alcohols denatured using brucine are not permitted.