By Raneem Sajid
The Chemicals That Outlast Your MakeupPick up any long-wear lipstick or waterproof mascara and turn it over. Somewhere on that ingredient list there might be a chemical that will outlast you, your grandchildren, and quite possibly the building you are standing in. You probably won’t be able to find it. In a 2021 study of 231 cosmetics sold in the United States and Canada, only 8 percent of the products screened actually listed a fluorinated ingredient on the label. The lab results told a different story.
The chemicals in question are per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals.” They have been around since the 1940s, and they earned that nickname honestly. Many of them barely break down at all. They repel water, oil, and stains, which is why they turned up in non-stick pans, rain jackets, and fast-food wrappers, and why they turned up in makeup. A foundation that doesn’t slide off by lunchtime and a mascara that survives a swim are doing something clever, and for years PFAS were part of how that trick was done.
I want to be careful here, because this subject attracts a lot of hysteria. Not all makeup contains PFAS. Not every PFAS is the same; there are thousands of them, and what we know about one does not automatically apply to the rest. And the 2021 study measured total fluorine, which points toward PFAS without naming the exact compound. Only 29 of those 231 products were sent for more detailed testing. So the study doesn’t prove your favourite eyeliner is poisoning you. What it proves is that a lot of products contained something fluorinated that nobody had bothered to mention.
That is the part that should bother us.
We have since had a much closer look. In December 2025, the US Food and Drug Administration published its first assessment of PFAS in cosmetics, using the product listings companies are now required to submit. It found 51 different PFAS intentionally added to 1,744 formulations on sale in the US. The agency reviewed the 25 most common. Five looked like low-risk under normal use. One raised a potential safety concern. For the other 19, the FDA could not reach a conclusion at all, because the toxicology data simply doesn’t exist.
Read that again. Nineteen chemicals, used on purpose in products people put on their eyes and lips every morning, and the regulator cannot tell you whether they are safe. The FDA also noted, almost in passing, that there is currently no federal rule prohibiting intentionally added PFAS in cosmetics. A product can contain them and still be perfectly legal.
Uncertainty cuts both ways. It is not evidence of harm, and anyone who tells you the FDA “found makeup is toxic” has not read the report. But it is not a licence to shrug, either. When you don’t know whether something is safe, the sensible response is to find out, and in the meantime to ask whether you needed it in the first place.
On that question the answer is fairly clear. The OECD reported in 2024 that practical, affordable alternatives to PFAS in cosmetics are widely available. Swapping them out usually means reformulating a whole product rather than replacing one ingredient, which costs money and takes time. Plenty of brands have already done it. California has banned intentionally added PFAS in cosmetics, and the industry has not collapsed. Long-wear makeup still exists. It just uses something else.
Then there is the environment, which is where the “forever” part really bites. The Environmental Protection Agency links exposure to certain PFAS with a range of health effects, though makeup is only one of many possible routes; drinking water, food packaging, and household products all contribute, and nobody can say precisely how much comes from your bathroom cabinet. But a single tube of lipstick is not really the issue. Millions of tubes are, along with the factories that make them and the sinks they get washed down into. Chemicals that don’t break down accumulate. That is not a scary hypothesis. It is arithmetic.
So what should change? Three things, none of them radical.
Companies that add PFAS on purpose should say so on the label, in plain language, and explain what the chemical is doing there. If they can’t justify it, they should take it out.
Regulators should fill the data gap the FDA has just documented. It is absurd that a chemical can be used in nearly two thousand products without anyone having established whether it is safe to put near an eye.
And we should stop letting marketing do the work that testing should be doing. “Clean” and “chemical-free” mean nothing; water is a chemical. A “PFAS-free” claim backed by independent testing means something. The difference matters.
None of this requires anyone to throw out their makeup bag tonight. It doesn’t require choosing between looking good and being healthy, which is a false choice the industry would rather we didn’t examine too closely. It requires the people who make and regulate these products to do the job we assume they are already doing.
Makeup goes on the skin, the eyes, and the lips, often every single day. Until the chemicals inside it are properly tested and honestly labelled, asking whether forever chemicals belong there is not alarmist. It is the least we should expect.
https://www.epa.gov/pfas/pfas-explained
https://www.epa.gov/pfas/our-current-understanding-human-health-and-environmental-risks-pfas
https://pubs.acs.org/estlcu/article/8/7/538/380315/Fluorinated-Compounds-in-North-American-Cosmetics
https://one.oecd.org/document/ENV/CBC/MONO(2024)4/en/pdf
Biography:
Raneem Sajid is a senior at TASIS England and the founder of Santé, a wellness brand. Her work on Santé has sparked a close interest in the ingredients behind everyday beauty and personal care products.
