Decoded Korea

A CAS registry number looks like the most reliable identifier a compliance team has. Names vary by language, by supplier and by decade. The number does not. So a common shortcut in regulatory checks is to take an ingredient's CAS number and look up every restriction filed against it. We checked how well that shortcut holds up across our database of 21,796 cosmetic ingredients. It holds up less often than the number's reputation suggests, and when it fails, it fails in a consistent direction. How many ingredients share a number Only 8,403 of the 21,796 ingredients carry a CAS number at all. The other 61 percent have none, so a CAS-based check cannot see them. Among the ingredients that do carry one, there are 7,419 distinct CAS numbers. Of those, 710 are listed against more than one ingredient, and 2,730 ingredients carry at least one shared number. Ingredients sharing one CAS number CAS numbers 2 369 3 109 4 56 5 49 6 to 10 79 11 or more 48 The largest si...