ANIMAL TESTS NO GUARANTEE FOR SAFETY

TOILETRIES and cos­metics are usually tested to see if they are safe and to prove their safety to regulators worldwide. However, successful animal testing is no guarantee that there will be no adverse reactions in humans. This is due to differences in metabo­lism, skin structure and even the fact that a sub­stance might be poiso­nous to one species and not another.

Also, toxicity tests on animals often use sub­stances in concentra­tions 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 times the dose humans could pos­sibly be exposed to.

Different substances have different effects according to the dose. It is thus inaccurate to apply a standard rule of more-severe-reactions­with-higher-doses on all substances.