Musings About PFAS Testing, September 2022 Entry
Disclaimer: This blog post is my understanding, as a beauty brand founder who is not a scientist, of the subject of organic fluorine and PFAS as it relates to our cosmetic business, to this day.
We've got good news. More sustainable packaging in development testing Non-detect < 10 ppm of organic fluorine!
As we make our way through our product line we are dedicated to offering 100% transparency.
We believe our customers are intelligent, curious and compassionate. They want what we want: a safer world.
We are facing a new challenge with parts per million of organic fluorine found by testing cosmetics, the largest indicator of the presence of any one of the 14000 untested PFAS or forever chemicals.
At SAPPHO, we are working through our products and our packaging, and we are committed to reducing the numbers of everything to <10 ppm (the smallest testable level at this time) as we go. We were thrilled to find out this week that a key component of an exciting new packaging development project has test results in the clear! While we can't show it to you yet, we're excited to share this piece of news.
We are grateful the testing so far on our complexion products and mascara have all testing undetected . As well, our plastic tubes, which we use for primers, cc creams and samples, have tested undetected (as plastic is a known leacher of PFAS).
Both Noemie and I have shared a lot of tears with all this news of PFAS and if I could afford to just walk away from those products that are testing higher, I would in a second. We also know our customers deserve our transparency and honesty.
Clean beauty was imagined by women scientists, and followed through on by entrepreneurs, for the good of all.
But we are back at the drawing board; all the companies must know this by now. We are choosing to talk about it.
What and who has been so amazing is our customers. Our sales are steady with stores and growing online and nearly all the web searches are organic.
Something our customers do know is that we have taken every precaution with our ingredients and in particular our minerals (sparkly eyeshadows being the highest testing) using low heavy metal, not coated, Ecocert and COSMOS certified as well as being verified not mined by children, and yet it appears these products are the ones we have to reimagine -with pressed minerals testing high - we think it might be that we were sold dimethicone covered minerals without our knowledge and so going foward we know what precautions to take. And we will, but with PFAS testing integral to every step of the way. I am not sure how long the process will take; we are still just two women so we rely mostly on word of mouth.
Knowledge of PFAS/Organic fluorine is especially poignant for women intending on or having children. We are so far by ourselves in searching for raw ingredient partners aware of this issue, so if anyone has any information regarding this standard I would love to hear back.
- JoAnn Fowler, Founder SAPPHO New Paradigm Cosmetics