Abstract
Media articles have claimed that “synthetic mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH)”, which are used in many cosmetics such as lip balms, are unsafe at any dose and should be replaced with natural alternatives. This paper examines whether these claims are correct and whether the perceived safety of these substances is influenced by the language used in the media. To achieve these goals, it first provides an extensive review of the toxicology literature, finding no support that MOSHs are unsafe at current usage levels. It then reviews the psychology literature to examine the effects of labelling a cosmetic ingredient as “natural” rather than “synthetic” and the effects of dose information. A 2 × 2 between-subjects experiments involving adult lip balm users shows that, as hypothesized, the perceived safety of lip balms increases when they are described as containing “naturally sourced mineral oil” rather than “synthetic mineral oil saturated hydrocarbon (MOSH)”, which are both correct descriptions. In addition, the perceived safety increases when the substance is described as being present in a low vs. a high dose, regardless of whether it was described as natural or synthetic. Overall, safety perceptions for common cosmetic substances can be significantly influenced by the language used in media reporting.
Highlights
A large number of media articles have recently alerted the public about the safety of some of the synthetic substances used in cosmetics
Safety concerns are severe for lip balms because, unlike most cosmetics, they may be ingested involuntarily and because some of them contain mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSHs), a substance described as “toxic” in Metro [6] and as “poison” in The Independent [7] based on a report from a consumer association
Its results show that claims about the dose and the origin of mineral oils influence its perceived safety, suggesting that safety perceptions for common cosmetic substances can be significantly influenced by the language used in media reporting
Summary
A large number of media articles have recently alerted the public about the safety of some of the synthetic substances used in cosmetics. Nonscientific news reporting about the safety of cosmetics has aggravated the distrust of the cosmetics industry [8] This distrust is probably contributing to “chemophobia”, the irrational fear that synthetic chemical ingredients are necessarily toxic and the belief that ingredients extracted from natural sources with minimal human intervention are necessarily safer [9]. These news reports have stimulated interest for “clean” or “natural” beauty, which replaces synthetic ingredients with natural
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