One of Europe’s leading certifiers of organic and natural cosmetics, ECOCERT, has given Australian sunscreen ingredient manufacturer Antaria Limited until the end of the week to respond to allegations that its ZinClear IM product is a nanomaterial. After this, ECOCERT will conduct independent testing of the company’s product. The ultimatum follows Friends of the Earth’s revelations last week that the company has been marketing nano-sunscreen ingredients as ‘non-nano’.
Antaria has been marketing its ZinClear product globally on the basis of non-nano claims and ECOCERT accreditation. Numerous sunscreen brands in both the US and Europe are affected.
It’s good news that ECOCERT is reviewing its approval of Antaria’s product. However, Antaria should never have been able to get away with misleading statements like this in the first place.
Quite frankly, if the Therapeutic Goods Administration had properly regulated nano-ingredients in sunscreen we would never be in this mess.
From July next year, nano-ingredients used in sunscreen in the European Union will have to be safety tested and labelled. This should hopefully prevent companies from making misleading claims in Europe in the future. But in Australia we will have no such protection.
European regulators are taking action to protect consumers from untested and unlabelled nano-ingredients in sunscreen. Why can’t our Federal Government do the same?
