Warning Out on 11 Unauthorized Beauty Products Sold Online
19 February 2025, Quezon City. Despite regulatory efforts to monitor online marketplaces, the problem with unauthorized health products such as cosmetics persists, a non-profit environmental and health watchdog group said.
The EcoWaste Coalition made this observation after purchasing 11 skincare cosmetics that are being sold by online sellers without prior authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the key regulatory agency tasked to ensure the safety, efficacy or quality of health products.
Consumers are lured into buying these cosmetics claiming to create healthy and radiant skin, remove age spots, blemishes, dark skin discoloration, freckles, and wrinkles, and solve other dermal conditions. Some are even sold at rock-bottom prices such as a 20-gram “whitening freckle removal cream” from China that is sold for just P16 per piece.
Among the unauthorized cosmetics purchased and analyzed by the group were 88 Total White Underarm Cream (pink jar), Jaysuing Wild Yam Cream, Lifusha Green Tea Cooling Cleansing Mud Mask, Lifusha Peach Nicotinamide Moisturizer, Lulajina Ginseng & Lingzhi Skin Whitening Cream, Perfect Skin Lady Melasma Breakdown Cream, Retinol Placenta Royal Dragon Blood Cream, Sadoer Snail Face Cream, Sweetrip Whitening Freckle Removal Cream, Teatrical Facial Cream, and Yunji Plain Face Cream.
Out of the 11 products, none conforms to the ASEAN-prescribed cosmetic labeling requirements, of which six have their labeling information mostly in foreign characters that Filipino consumers would not understand.
While negative for mercury and other heavy metals as per chemical screening conducted by the EcoWaste Coalition using a portable X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) analyzer, there is no guarantee that the products are safe from other substances, as well as bacterial contaminants, not permitted in cosmetics.
As these products have not undergone the mandatory notification process of the FDA, there is no assurance of compliance to good manufacturing practices and that, as pointed out by the FDA, “the use of such violative products may pose health risks to consumers.”
Repeating the FDA’s advice, the EcoWaste Coalition encouraged online shoppers to refrain from patronizing health products without valid product notifications or registrations. Before making any purchase, consumers are reminded to check if the product is authorized or not using the FDA Verification Portal at https://verification.fda.gov.ph.
According to the FDA, “potential hazards (from using an unauthorized product) may come from ingredients that are not allowed to be part of a cosmetic product or from the contamination of heavy metals.”
“The use of substandard and possibly adulterated cosmetic products may result in adverse reactions, including, but not limited to, skin irritation, itchiness, anaphylactic shock and organ failure,” the FDA warned. (PR)
