"Clean beauty" and "chemical-free"

The claim

"Clean" or "chemical-free" products are safer, gentler and free of harmful ingredients.

What the evidence actually shows

Start with the regulators. The US FDA states plainly that it has no regulatory definition for "natural" or "organic" in cosmetics — the terms appear nowhere in the FD&C Act or FDA regulations, so any product may use them. In the EU, the common criteria for cosmetic claims under Regulation 655/2013 go further: "free from" claims are not permitted where they denigrate legally used ingredients or imply a safety benefit the product does not have, which makes "chemical-free"-style marketing non-compliant.

Then the substance. A study in Dermatitis analysed 1,470 products carrying a major retailer's "clean" designation and found allergens throughout: fragrances and botanicals in 82.9%, phenoxyethanol in 40.2%, tocopherol in 40.2%, benzoates in 29.5%, propylene glycol in 25.1%, alkyl glucosides in 20.7%. The "clean" label did not predict low allergenicity.

A review in Current Dermatology Reports adds the sting: reformulating away from named preservatives has been linked to rising allergic contact dermatitis from the replacements, notably isothiazolinones and alkyl glucosides. Removing a well-characterised ingredient in favour of a less-studied one is not automatically a safety gain.

The unavoidable point about "chemical-free"

Water is a chemical. So is every ingredient in every cosmetic ever made. The phrase describes nothing, and its function is to imply a hazard in the alternative rather than to state a property of the product. It is worth saying plainly because a brand that uses it has told you something about its standards of argument.

What to do instead

Judge products on named ingredients, concentrations and evidence, not on category labels. If you are avoiding a specific substance for a specific reason — a diagnosed allergy, a clinician's advice — read the INCI list, which is regulated, rather than the front of the pack, which is not.