Assessing product safety for users of SCA personal care products

By Ann-Christin Pålsson & Ellen Riise

A product safety assessment is performed for all raw materials used in personal care products marketed by SCA. The purpose of the assessment is to secure that products supplied;

• are safe for consumers to use as intended, as well as for reasonable foreseeable misuse
• comply with relevant legal requirements

Procedure

The product safety assessment (PSA) for new materials is initiated by the person responsible for introducing a new material in a product, or, in the case of an update of an expiring product safety approval, by the person responsible for the material in the specification of the product. The assessments are performed according to scientific principles for toxicology assessments and are done by personnel at the product safety function.

The assessment is performed based on information from different sources, such as:

• Information collected from suppliers
• Tests of the material, for example cytotoxity tests and human skin irritation tests,
• Literature and database searches, for example in Toxline and Medline
• Regulations
• Internal and external expertise

Information from these sources is compiled, assessed and evaluated and is then used as basis for decisions on which materials to use in the products.