Decoded Korea

An ingredient list on a cosmetic product is written under one body of law. In Korea that is the Cosmetics Act, administered by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. But many of those same substances are also registered under a second body of law, the Act on the Registration and Evaluation of Chemical Substances, known as K-REACH and administered by the Ministry of Environment. The two systems ask different questions. Cosmetics regulation asks whether a substance is safe on skin at a given concentration in a given product type. Chemical regulation asks whether a substance is hazardous to handle, whether it persists in the environment, whether a facility storing it needs an emergency plan. We hold both datasets. We matched them on CAS number to see how often the two systems land on the same substance, and how often they disagree. The overlap Of 21,796 cosmetic ingredients in our database, 8,403 carry a CAS number. Of 47,041 substances in our K-REACH database, 41,674 carry one. Ma...