The short answer is: it is a bluff.
There are several fundamental reasons why personal care ingredients cannot be rated uniformly. Even the simplest rating systems, which use subjective adjectives like "bad," "good," or "best," or numbers, e.g., 1-10, fail to provide minimally valuable, objective data about an ingredient's role in formulation, quality, or value.
People are naturally drawn to comparisons and ratings. Unfortunately, some unscrupulous or simply uninformed publishers exploit this tendency to make their content more appealing. They use oversimplified labels and pseudo-ratings to attract readers. Some manufacturers go further, "valuating" the ingredients they use to elevate their own formulations. And finally, some websites offer product rating services built on "fluffy" ratings of each ingredient, ignoring their interactions, such as potentiation, balancing, and mitigation influences.
Some systems do offer objective ratings, but only for isolated properties such as acidity (pH) or emulsifying ability (HLB). These yield quantitative values that are useful in formulation, but they are not comprehensive or interchangeable across different ingredient types.
If you're serious about building an objective rating system for cosmetic ingredients, several non-negotiable conditions must be met:
- Pure substance: A unified system of precise ingredient names
- Standardized production: Consistent methods, conditions, and quality benchmarks
- Single-property (function) focus: Ratings must target one property with objective, quantitative metrics
- Unified safety testing: Harmonized protocols for toxicology and exposure thresholds
Is the cosmetic ingredient's unified name (e.g., INCI) on packaging meant to indicate that it is the same substance in different products?
No. Seeing the same ingredient name on different product labels does not guarantee it's the same substance or that it serves the same purpose.
Take Carbomer, for example. It's a common ingredient. Carbomer is a generic INCI term for a family of acrylic polymers, characterized by distinct physical properties such as viscosity, molecular size, and water adsorption ability. These variations affect the polymer's role in formulation, whether as a gelling agent, emulsifier, or thickener.
Conclusion:
The rating of "Carbomer" is meaningless without specifying:
- The exact polymer variant or grade
- Its intended function in the formulation
- The property being measured (e.g., viscosity, stability, safety profile)
Without a precise naming system and a property- or function-specific frame of reference, any unified rating system collapses into a marketing bluff.
Can ingredients derived from the same plant, the same part, and the same method be rated?
Still no. Even when two extracts share the same INCI name and originate from the same plant part using the same method (e.g., extraction), their composition and properties can vary dramatically.
For example, extracts from different manufacturers may differ in:
- Biological activity, due to differing compound profiles
- Color, odor, and viscosity
- Aggregate state - one may be a liquid, another a solid
Why? Even with the same method, extraction conditions, such as temperature, solvent type, and extractor design, can radically alter the outcome, thereby changing the composition of the final extract. Additionally, natural raw materials can have varying compositions due to factors such as growing location, soil conditions, irrigation, season, harvesting method, and post-harvest handling. In fact, different substances share the same ingredient name, but have distinct properties, making any hypothetical rating misleading.
Conclusion:
The INCI or common ingredient name is insufficient for ingredient rating. Without standardized production conditions and verified compound profiles, any rating system based on name is a marketing fluff.
How to rate multifunctional ingredients?
If you are not attempting to mislead the user, it is impossible to do so with a single adjective or a numeric value.
It addresses the third non-negotiable condition for any objective rating system, which requires compliance with a valid comparison criterion. The issue is that a substance's performance is evaluated within a specific frame of reference.
For instance, if a single ingredient is a "good" solvent but a "poor" emulsifier, how can it be rated overall? Its score would entirely depend on a specific frame of reference (which function the rater chose to prioritize), the particular property being measured, and the intended function in the formulation.
Conclusion
Therefore, to provide any value, a rating system must be function-specific. A single ingredient would require a separate, quantitative rating for each function it performs, which makes it practically impossible to have a unified rating system.
How to rate the safety profile of a cosmetic ingredient?
It is also a complex and significant unsolved problem. There is no single, internationally accepted, objective system for rating the safety profiles of substances used in personal care products. The safety profile of an ingredient cannot be reduced to a single score, as various factors, including regulatory area, formulation/substance interaction contexts, individual response, and others, influence it.
Regulatory Discrepancies
There are different regulatory areas with varying safety criteria. For example, Phenol is a powerful exfoliant that is severely restricted or banned in the EU but may be permitted for use in skin care products in the USA under specific conditions and concentrations. This statement alone proves that a global, unified safety rating is impossible.
Formulation/substance interaction and mitigation
Many marketing-driven myths have made ingredients like SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulfate) and Titanium Dioxide negatively popular. However, these simplified warnings ignore the reality of formulation:
SLS: Nobody uses pure SLS as a liquid soap; formulations with this detergent contain mitigating agents that effectively arrest the potential adverse effects of this ingredient.
Titanium Dioxide (TiO2): Used in sunscreens and decorative cosmetics. It is often coated with safer metal oxides or other ingredients, such as silicones or polymers, to modify its properties and significantly reduce potential reactivity. Furthermore, despite its relatively low acute oral toxicity value (when ingested), its topical use is considered safe. Still, concerns exist regarding the inhalation of respirable particles and possible genotoxicity in some grades.
Other factors
Other significant factors make a unified safety rating practically impossible:
Data Integrity Concerns: The field is plagued by misleading information or falsifications in material safety data sheets, toxicity tests, and clinical trials, some of which are attributed to dishonest manufacturers.
AI-Generated Threats: The new safety threat comes from AI-generated "fluffy content" about cosmetic ingredients, which often perpetuates myths or presents generalized, non-contextual information as fact.
- Individual and Biological Factors: Safety is not a universal guarantee. Adverse effects can vary significantly based on:
Individual Variability: Rising rates of sensitization and frequency of allergic reactions to ingredients currently considered safe and hypoallergenic. (Some individuals are already allergic to antihistamines, highlighting the unpredictability of immune responses.)
Ethnic Factors: Ingredients can have different adverse effects on various skin and hair types due to inherent biological differences.
Personal variables, including age, sex, and environmental factors (e.g., climate, pollution exposure), can all modulate an ingredient's effect.
Final Conclusion
The idea of a unified rating system for cosmetic ingredients is attractive because it promises simplicity. However, reality is not simple; it is shaped by chemistry, biology, human physiology, and formulation. Ingredient names can cover multiple variants, extraction methods yield different compositions, multifunctional substances resist single-value scoring, and the safety profile depends on many factors.
Any attempt to reduce this complexity to a single adjective or number is not science: it is a marketing bluff.