Dear Valerie: I work for a skincare brand. Our marketing team is always asking me if pregnant women can use certain ingredients in our products. Our suppliers won’t tell us if their ingredients are pregnancy safe or not. Shouldn’t they be able to provide this information? 

—Baby on Board

Dear Baby:

As a new mother, I understand the desire to ascertain the safety of an ingredient (and product) for pregnant women. Unfortunately, suppliers cannot provide this information as safety testing of cosmetic products, ingredients and even medical drugs, on pregnant humans is not ethical and not permitted. Therefore, very little safety data exists.

Some raw materials have animal studies on rats, mice and fish. However, for your ingredient supplier to furnish a definitive statement on the ingredient’s suitability for the little tummy tot, human data is generally required. Toxicologists can make theoretical assessments based on industry knowledge and historical usage, so this is what we typically rely on today. Unfortunately, this is not also straightforward.

Even in the revered EU SCCS opinions, specific safety recommendations are not made with pregnancy in mind. For example, we know that retinol has safety considerations as a derivative of Vitamin A. Vitamin A is toxic at certain doses and is therefore particularly toxic to fetuses. Yet, there is no specific restriction in the SCCS opinion explicitly stating any retinol-containing products should not be used on pregnant women. 

An ingredient also doesn’t tell the full story. Ingredients aren’t used at 100% in products. They’re formulated at varying percentages, and they’re used in many different product types. These product types are presumably used on different parts of the body with different dose applications—for example, a face cream differs from a body lotion in that the application sites are distinct parts of the body, and more body lotion is applied by the consumer in one application. Different ingredients could also be present in the formulation that change the way the ingredient in question interacts with skin. Penetration enhancers, anyone?

As you can see, it’s not so easy for an ingredient supplier to provide pregnancy safety information that’s meaningful to the consumer. The dose (and delivery) makes the poison! The best thing your company can do is employ a licensed toxicologist to review your formulations with pregnant women as the end user in mind.