Don’t take our word for it. Here’s every fact on this site, with its evidence grade, its caveats, and a link to the source, so you can check us.
We start you on the strong ones: findings that have been replicated or come from one large, well-controlled study. Moderate and weak facts are here too, labeled for what they are. Use “Link to this fact” to share a single card.
The industry / Review of other studies
In 1997 the cosmetics industry's own safety panel (CIR) formally asked for inhalation-toxicity data on benzyl alcohol, benzoic acid, and sodium benzoate, received none, and still published a 2001 "safe" conclusion that explicitly excludes any product where inhalation is a route of exposure (colognes, hairsprays, deodorants, aerosol fixatives).
Strong evidence: The gap is documented in the report's own text (Notice of Insufficient Data, no comments received); no later CIR report closing it was found in this pass.
Source: Nair 2001 (CIR Expert Panel), International Journal of Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Measured in people or real products
The independent dermatologists who ran this study concluded deodorants should contain cinnamal at less than 0.01% to protect people already sensitized, a stricter limit than the fragrance industry's later 0.05% IFRA standard.
Strong evidence: Authors' own recommendation, not a regulatory outcome; the 0.05% IFRA cap was set afterward using the induction NOEL, not this elicitation data.
Source: Bruze et al. 2003, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology Link to this fact
The industry / Measured in people or real products
The independent dermatologists who ran this study concluded deodorants should contain isoeugenol at less than 0.0063% to protect people already sensitized, about 3x stricter than IFRA's current 0.02% ceiling for consumer products.
Strong evidence.
Caveats
Authors' own recommendation, not a regulatory outcome; the 0.02% IFRA cap (set in 1998) was not derived from this elicitation data, and 0.0063% is only the lowest concentration this study tested, not a demonstrated safe floor.
Source: Bruze et al. 2005, Contact Dermatitis Link to this fact
The industry / Measured in people or real products
The independent dermatologists who ran this study suggested deodorants should contain hydroxycitronellal at less than 0.032% to protect people already sensitized, well under the fragrance industry's own 1987 recommendation equating to about 1% in finished consumer products.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Authors' own recommendation, not a regulatory outcome; 0.032% is only the lowest concentration this single-center study tested, not a demonstrated safe floor, and the industry cap was set from human sensitization (induction) testing, not this elicitation data.
Source: Svedman et al. 2003, Contact Dermatitis Link to this fact
The industry / Government agency
A 2024 CIR draft stated that industry-submitted laser-diffraction survey data show an average of 26.6% (+/- 13.4% SD) of particles released from propellant deodorant/antiperspirant sprays are small enough to reach the deep lung (<10 micron), versus under 1% for pump sprays.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Document is stamped 'Distributed for Comment Only — Do Not Cite or Quote' and was still under Panel discussion as of the Dec 2024 meeting; the underlying particle-size data are unpublished industry submissions (self-reported, small n=3 companies), not an independently published study.
Source: CIR draft (Zhu) 2024 Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Government agency
A 2024 CIR draft's meeting transcript recorded that an earlier version of its propellant-deodorant exposure calculation used a 5% respirable-particle-fraction assumption, which two Expert Panel members identified as very likely wrong given the same document's own data showing a median particle diameter of about 10 micron for these sprays (implying roughly half the particles should be below the respirable threshold); the assumption was later revised upward (33%, then 26.6-40%).
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
This is a self-corrected internal drafting error surfaced in transcript discussion, not a peer-reviewed finding; the transcript indicates the error was first raised by an outside commenter (Women's Voices for the Earth) rather than caught internally.
Source: CIR draft (Zhu) 2024 Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
As of 2025, the cosmetics industry's own safety scientists say the 'airborne fraction' values used to calculate inhalation exposure to hairspray, deodorant, and perfume sprays are a heuristic convenience carried over from a 2009 model, not physically grounded measurements, and a dedicated industry project (ICCS) to generate real product-specific values is still ongoing.
Moderate evidence: This is the industry's own admission of a data gap in its own exposure model, not an outside critique.
Source: Steiling et al. 2025, Toxicology Letters Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
The daily-use amounts the EU's official cosmetic-ingredient safety assessments (SCCS Notes of Guidance Table 3A) use for body lotion, lipstick, and deodorant non-spray trace directly to a Colipa (the EU cosmetics trade association)-commissioned industry study of 44,100 households and 18,057 individual consumers in five countries, and check out against that study's own published P90 data.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Industry-funded and industry-run (Colipa, with authors from L'Oreal, P&G, Unilever, Henkel, Beiersdorf and the commercial modeling contractor CREMe Software); the paper's own Conflict of Interest statement says "there are no conflicts of interest" despite only one of eight authors being academic.
Source: Hall 2007, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
For body lotion, facial moisturizer, toothpaste and shampoo, the more often a person uses the product the less they use per application (an inverse correlation between frequency and amount-per-use); no such correlation exists for lipstick or deodorant/antiperspirant, so multiplying the maximum daily frequency by the maximum amount-per-event overstates exposure to the first four products — for body lotion, that naive worst-case calculation (47 g/day) is well above the study's own calculated 99.9th percentile of 17 g/day.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Industry-funded (Colipa); the correlation and its practical consequence are the study's own stated headline finding, not independently replicated elsewhere in this evidence base yet.
Source: Hall 2007, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
This 2007 industry study found Europeans' deodorant/antiperspirant non-spray use had roughly tripled versus the ~15-year-old figure it replaced — from 0.5 g/day to 1.5 g/day (90th percentile) — which the authors attribute to changing personal-hygiene habits rather than a change in measurement method.
Moderate evidence: Industry-funded (Colipa); the attribution to genuine habit change versus improved/different measurement methodology is the authors' own interpretation, not separately tested.
Source: Hall 2007, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
This paper's conservative-model design assumed every unit of cosmetic product recorded as sold (in national purchase-panel data) was actually used, and applied the single highest-use country's scale factor to the entire EU15 population for every product — e.g. EU15 shampoo exposure was modeled on Denmark's (the highest) usage and EU15 deodorant-spray exposure on Great Britain's (the highest) usage.
Moderate evidence: Industry-funded (Colipa); conservatism assumptions chosen by the study's own industry sponsors, not independently audited.
Source: Hall 2007, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
Comparing new to ~15-year-old EU reference values, the two biggest changes among all 12 cosmetic product types this Colipa project has now studied are deodorant/antiperspirant non-spray (roughly tripling, 0.5 to 1.5 g/day) and shower gel (nearly doubling, 10 to 18.7 g/day), which the study's own industry authors attribute to changing personal-hygiene habits rather than a measurement-methods change.
Moderate evidence.
Caveats
Industry-funded (Colipa); the attribution to changed habits, rather than to the newer, larger and more rigorous measurement method itself, is the authors' own interpretation and is not independently tested in the paper.
Source: Hall 2011, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
The industry / Other evidence
A 2011 industry follow-up study that restates the 2007 deodorant-spray daily-use figure (6.10 g/day) still could not say how much of that spray actually lands on skin — the same 'quantity leaving the can, not landing on skin, is under investigation' caveat as the original 2007 study, unresolved four years later.
Moderate evidence: Industry-funded (Colipa); deodorant spray is not one of this 2011 paper's own five studied products, so this is a restated figure, not a new measurement.
Source: Hall 2011, Food and Chemical Toxicology Industry-funded Link to this fact
Information, not medical advice. See also: myths we won’t tell you.