Parabens Were First—Is Phenoxyethanol Next?

In 2004, Dr. Philippa D. Darbre published a study titled Concentrations of parabens in human breast tumours. The backlash was swift. Critics called out the study’s small sample size, the lack of control samples, its inability to identify the source of the parabens, and the possibility that the samples themselves were contaminated. 

But just as quickly, the media latched on. Headlines claiming that parabens may cause breast cancer spread across the internet. Later that same year, Dr. Darbre responded to the controversy in the Journal of Applied Toxicology, writing, “Nowhere in the manuscript was any claim made that the presence of parabens had caused the breast cancer.” By then, though, the damage was done. In the public’s mind, the connection had already been made.

Even though parabens were—and still are—considered safe for use in cosmetics by regulators, many beauty brands, fearing consumer backlash, removed them from their formulas. The thing is, when you remove parabens from a beauty product, something else has to take its place. That’s because parabens are preservatives, and any beauty product that contains water needs one to stay safe. Without preservatives, products can start to smell bad or look strange, and mold and bacteria can grow. Not great.

Preservatives make sure that products are safe, stable, and effective throughout their intended shelf life. If we didn’t have them, we’d have to buy beauty products as often as we buy the spinach that sits in the back of our fridge, which we always say we’re going to use but never do.

As an alternative to parabens, many brands, including Dieux, use phenoxyethanol as a preservative. While phenoxyethanol has been repeatedly, extensively evaluated and is considered safe for use in cosmetics at concentrations up to 1% (more on that later), it’s become the target of a lot of fear-mongering (sound familiar?). 

Yuka is a popular health app that lets users scan beauty products to see ingredient breakdowns and potential health impacts. It flags phenoxyethanol as a “moderate risk,” and products containing the preservative often earn a “poor” rating. The app labels phenoxyethanol a “potential allergen,” “irritant,” “pollutant,” and even a “potential endocrine disruptor.” Sounds pretty alarming, right? But before you start purging your bathroom cabinet, it’s worth noting that Yuka doesn’t tell the whole story when it comes to phenoxyethanol.

We explain what phenoxyethanol is, why experts consider it safe to use, and what apps like Yuka tend to leave out when assessing ingredient safety.

What Is Phenoxyethanol and Is It Safe?

Phenoxyethanol is a preservative which keeps harmful bacteria, mold, and yeast from growing in your beauty products and ending up on your skin. It’s commonly used because it’s effective at low concentrations and works across a wide range of product types and formulations. Plus, it’s one of the most thoroughly studied preservatives in cosmetics, backed by decades of animal studies, human research, and real-world use. Phenoxyethanol also has a low incidence of irritation or allergy, and it’s not considered a common sensitizer in cosmetics, explains toxicologist Rani Ghosh. It’s been safely used in everything from cleansers and creams to serums, sunscreens, and baby products for decades, without any signs of widespread problems.

The European Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (EU SCCS) first looked at phenoxyethanol in 1990, and after successive reviews, they reaffirmed in 2016 that it’s safe to use in cosmetic products. The EU SCCS is seen as a global gold standard, says Ghosh, because it does independent, publicly available safety assessments that look at how ingredients are actually used in products and how much people are exposed to in real life. Like all cosmetic ingredients, even natural ones, phenoxyethanol is constantly being reviewed. Ingredients aren’t checked out once then forgotten about; they’re continually revisited and challenged as new evidence and real-world usage data emerges. 

The facts don’t lie: Based on the full body of evidence, phenoxyethanol is considered safe for use in cosmetic products at concentrations up to 1%. This limit includes significant safety margins, designed to protect even the most sensitive users in real-world situations. This means that even if you use multiple products formulated with 1% phenoxyethanol, not only is the integrity of your skincare safe, but you are too.

What Do Brands Use Instead Of Phenoxyethanol?

Brands that advertise themselves as paraben-free or phenoxyethanol-free usually don’t just swap in a single alternative preservative, says Ghosh. Instead, rather than relying on one well-studied preservative, they tend to use multi-component systems that keep microbes in check by stacking several weaker mechanisms on top of one another. Ghosh explains that this approach can be perfectly safe, but because it’s more sensitive to formulation details, packaging choices, and how people use the products day to day, there’s a narrower range of conditions under which the preservative system is effective (a.k.a. the operating margin).

In real life, products are opened repeatedly, touched during use, exposed to air, and stored in environments where temperature and humidity can vary. Each of these interactions can introduce small amounts of microbes. Preservation systems with narrower operating margins have less flexibility to cope with this ongoing exposure over time, says Ghosh. This is where well-studied preservatives with a broad operating margin like phenoxyethanol and parabens show their strength, offering reliable and predictable protection across a wide range of products and real-world use conditions.

What Health Apps Get Wrong About Ingredient Safety

Health apps, Yuka included, get their information from credible regulatory sources like the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety (ANSM), two databases used by regulators. The issue, though, isn’t the data; it’s how the data is selected and interpreted.

A substance's ability to cause harm depends on how much you’re exposed to and for how long. As the saying goes, “the dose makes the poison.” This is where the distinction between hazard versus risk comes into play. Hazard is the inherent potential of a substance’s ability to cause harm; it describes what could happen under worst case conditions, or at very high doses. It doesn’t reflect how consumers will actually use the product or indicate the probability of harm, explains Ghosh.

Risk is different. It describes the likelihood that harm will occur under real world conditions. A risk assessment takes several factors into consideration: the percentage of the ingredient, how often a product is applied, how long it remains on the skin, how much is absorbed, and which exposure routes are relevant—like skin contact, incidental ingestion, or inhalation—during normal use. And these safety assessments take into account the fact that you might be exposed to this ingredient across several beauty products. (So, yes, toxicologists are thinking about your 12 step skincare routine.)

Understanding the difference between hazard and risk is really important in toxicology. Without thinking about how much of a substance you’re actually exposed to through normal product use, even common and tightly regulated ingredients like phenoxyethanol can seem dangerous if you just look at the hazard data on its own.

Do Health Apps Help People Make Better Choices?

Health apps don’t do a great job at helping people make “safer” choices when it comes to their beauty products. Their scoring systems only look at hazard information; it doesn’t take risk or exposure into consideration, so there’s no nuance. How can you say an ingredient is harmful when you don’t know how much is being used, or if you don’t consider the rest of the formulation? You can’t. This misinformation leads to the demonization of ingredients that have been proven, over and over again, to be safe at appropriate levels, like phenoxyethanol. 

Demonizing these ingredients creates a vacuum and into that vacuum comes a slew of other, “cleaner” ingredients that have been less extensively studied. The irony? People think they’re picking safer options, but they may actually be signing up for more unknowns.

These apps can’t replace evidence-based assessments by toxicologists or the regulators overseeing cosmetic safety. What really determines whether a product is safe and effective is how it’s formulated, ingredient quality, and the rigorous testing reputable brands put behind their products.