The U.S. Senate is currently considering a bill to enhance the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of cosmetics. This bill—the Personal Care Products Safety Act—is intended to bring the aging cosmetics laws in the U.S. in line with consumer demand for more rigorous guarantees of safety. The law that currently governs cosmetics is the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA), which was signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1938.

The focus at the time the FDCA became law was removing ingredients known to cause harm. The FDA supported passage of the 1938 law by pointing to Lash-Lure, an eyelash dye that caused eye damage and at least one case of blindness. Today, the focus has shifted from cracking down on unsafe products to identifying these ingredients before they are used in cosmetics products.

It’s too early at the time of this writing to predict if this bill, currently in the U.S. Senate, will be signed into law, but it highlights the current areas of dissatisfaction with the 1938 law, and it illustrates possible legislative responses. Topics covered by the proposed bill include:

How to ensure ingredient safety
Whether cosmetics facilities should register with the FDA
Mandatory “good manufacturing practices”
Instituting a requirement to report injuries
Whether states can regulate cosmetics, also called federal preemption of state laws
Giving the FDA authority to order recalls of unsafe products

Read more at MedEsthetics.