At Kosterina, we are committed to making safe, clean products that deliver real results. Our skincare is free of ingredients linked to harmful health effects like hormone disruption, cancer, and skin irritation. “Clean beauty” is a largely unregulated term, created in response to the limited regulation of the beauty industry. In broad terms, clean beauty products are those made without ingredients shown or suspected to harm human health.
What You Should Know
Along with green and organic, “clean” is a word often used today in the sphere of wellness. "Clean eating" describes a diet full of fresh, organic foods made without additives, preservatives, and chemicals. Similarly, clean beauty speaks to cosmetics formulated without toxic ingredients. But there's no universal definition of clean beauty, as it's not regulated by the U.S. government. In Europe and Canada, the government better regulates what can and can't be in beauty products. The European Union has even banned more than 1,300 ingredients for cosmetic use, while the United States has banned only 11, according to the CSC, or Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.
Today, a suite of bills known as the Safer Beauty Bill Package is being reviewed in Congress. Together, they aim to ban 11 of the most toxic chemicals—among them mercury, formaldehyde, parabens, phthalates, phenylenediamines (hair-dye chemicals), and the entire class of PFAS, or “forever” chemicals. They also would require beauty companies to disclose their flavor and fragrance ingredients and ensure supply-chain transparency.
Should you Switch to Clean Skincare? Is it Effective?
Yes and yes. When it comes to protecting your health, most people overlook the largest organ of the human body: the skin! What we put on our skin inevitably impacts not just our health, but also the environment as chemicals are washed down millions of household drains multiple times a day.
Chemicals used in skincare have the ability to mimic the body’s hormones and are classified as endocrine disruptors. They include parabens, a routinely used class of preservatives and chemical sunscreens (on labels, look for words ending in “-paraben,” like “butylparaben”). As the name suggests, endocrine disruptors mess with the endocrine system, which regulates our body’s essential rhythms, like metabolism, mood, and reproductive processes. Endocrine disruptors are particularly dangerous because they come in very tiny doses. It’s their micro size which allows them to impersonate our own hormones, also very tiny. Endocrine disruptors have been linked to severe long-term health damage, including reproductive issues, birth defects, metabolic problems, cancer, and little one’s with developing systems.
What Clean Means For Us
Kosterina is devoted to transparency and clean, extra virgin products for the whole body, inside and out. We formulate our skincare following the Credo Clean Standard and avoid using the ingredients on The Dirty List® (all 2700+ of them) as they are linked to harmful health effects. We avoid parabens, phthalates, formaldehyde, petrolatum and paraffin. We take our commitment one step further with emulsifier-free skincare (which, as of today, are not on the dirty list). Our skincare is crafted with high-performance clean ingredients—so it’s safe enough even for children.
