PFAS are not a single chemical but a sprawling family of more than 10,000 synthetic fluorinated compounds, defined under the framework adopted by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the United Nations Environment Programme by the presence of carbon-fluorine bonds. That bond, one of the strongest in organic chemistry, makes these substances extraordinarily resistant to degradation, earning them the nickname forever chemicals. Their persistence, tendency to bioaccumulate and documented associations with adverse health effects have placed them at the centre of public health concern worldwide. In cosmetics, PFAS have historically served useful functions: they improve spreadability, create water-resistant films, and help pigments adhere to skin for hours. It is precisely these performance benefits that made them attractive formulators’ tools, and precisely these properties that now make them regulatory targets.

The new analysis, conducted by Margaux Vincent-Graindorge and Lionel Ripoll, took a deliberately simple approach: keyword screening of the International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients, or INCI, lists that regulations require on every product label. The dataset covered 1,233 products spanning three categories: 500 makeup items, 111 oral care products, and 622 other personal care products such as skin creams and cleansers. The results were immediately intriguing. Just over 19 percent of the products declared at least one fluorine-containing ingredient on their labels. But when the researchers applied the strict OECD and UNEP definition of a PFAS, requiring an actual carbon-fluorine bond, the number collapsed to a mere 0.9 percent of products. In other words, fewer than one in a hundred products declared an ingredient that legally qualifies as a PFAS.

The ingredient-level classification reveals why the gap exists, and it is not evidence of concealed chemicals. Almost all of the declared fluorine in these products belongs to compounds with no carbon-fluorine bond at all. The dominant contributor is synthetic fluorphlogopite, a synthetic mica prized in makeup for its shimmer and purity, which appeared in 134 products. The second major contributor is a category of dental fluoride salts, such as those used in toothpastes to prevent cavities, found in 88 products. These inorganic fluorides are chemically worlds apart from PFAS: they lack the persistent organofluorine backbone that defines the forever-chemical family, yet a casual reading of a label mentioning fluoride or fluorphlogopite could easily lead a consumer, or even a careless screener, to lump them together with PFAS.

Perhaps the most visually striking finding is how strongly fluorine declaration is structured by product type. In oral care products, 73 percent declared at least one fluorine-containing ingredient, an unsurprising figure given the near-universal use of cavity-preventing fluoride salts in toothpaste. In makeup, the figure was 28.2 percent, driven overwhelmingly by fluorphlogopite and related pearlescent agents. Across all other personal care products, the figure plummeted to just 1.9 percent. The authors report that this distribution is highly statistically significant, with a chi-squared statistic of 355.7 across two degrees of freedom and a p-value below 0.001. The pattern tells a coherent story: when fluorine appears on a cosmetic label, it almost always has an innocent, well-understood explanation rooted in the product’s function, not in the stealth use of forever chemicals.

So why have analytical studies repeatedly found fluorinated compounds in cosmetics at levels that seem to dwarf what labels declare? The answer, the researchers argue, lies in the difference between two families of measurement techniques. Targeted methods, typically using liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry, identify and quantify specific PFAS compounds against reference standards. They are precise but blind to anything outside their target list, which is a serious limitation in a chemical family of 10,000 members. Total-fluorine methods, by contrast, such as combustion ion chromatography and the extractable organic fluorine approach, capture every fluorine atom in a sample regardless of compound identity. These methods have powered many of the alarming headlines, because they routinely report fluorine masses far exceeding what any declared PFAS ingredient could explain.

The critical insight from the new study is that total fluorine is not synonymous with intentionally added PFAS. When the label data and the analytical surveys are placed side by side, the deliberate use of PFAS as functional ingredients in finished cosmetic formulations appears to be uncommon. The organofluorine that analytical surveys detect, the authors contend, most likely enters products through routes that no ingredient list could ever capture: process water used in manufacturing, residues on shared production equipment, or fluorinated contamination present in treated raw materials before they ever reach the formulator. This distinction matters enormously for policy, because the regulatory frameworks now proliferating around the world are almost universally keyed to intentional addition, targeting PFAS that manufacturers deliberately put into their products through defined substance lists.

The regulatory landscape is indeed tightening rapidly. The European Union operates restrictions under the REACH regulation and the Persistent Organic Pollutants regulation, while the European Chemicals Agency has broader restrictions under consideration. France has enacted a dedicated law on products containing PFAS, adopted in February 2025. Canada has proposed measures targeting forever chemicals, including action on firefighting foams, and has published a state-of-PFAS report assessing the whole class. Yet if a meaningful share of the fluorine in cosmetics arrives as unintended contamination rather than deliberate formulation, these frameworks, however well intentioned, may miss the very exposure pathways they aim to control. A regulation that bans intentionally added PFAS cannot, by construction, address fluorine that rides in on process water or a treated raw material.

The study also carries a cautionary tale for how science communicates risk. Several widely shared claims about PFAS in cosmetics rest on total-fluorine measurements interpreted through the lens of intentional addition, a combination that can inflate perceived prevalence. A sunscreen study that demonstrated transdermal absorption of a radiolabelled PFAS, and biomonitoring work linking personal care product use to serum PFAS levels, underscore that dermal exposure is a genuine pathway worth studying. But the new INCI analysis suggests that the magnitude of that pathway from finished cosmetics may be smaller than feared, and that the field needs better tools to distinguish listed ingredients from residual contamination. The authors point toward suspect screening workflows using high-resolution mass spectrometry, and toward fluorine mass-balance approaches that reconcile total fluorine with identified compounds, as the way forward.

For consumers, the practical takeaway is one of measured reassurance rather than complacency. The vast majority of fluorine appearing on cosmetic labels is synthetic mica in a shimmering eyeshadow or a cavity-fighting fluoride salt in toothpaste, neither of which is a PFAS in the regulatory or toxicological sense. For policymakers, the message is more demanding: if forever chemicals are sneaking into cosmetics through water, equipment and raw materials, then protecting the public will require controlling contamination at the supply-chain level, not merely policing ingredient lists. And for the scientific community, the study is a reminder that a keyword on a label and a fluorine atom in a chromatogram are two very different kinds of evidence, and that conflating them risks distorting both public understanding and the regulations meant to keep people safe. The full INCI dataset and the Python screening script behind the analysis are available from the corresponding authors, offering other researchers a transparent starting point for replicating and extending the work.

Subject of Research: Declared versus actual presence of PFAS in cosmetic products based on INCI ingredient list analysis

Article Title: Declared versus actual presence of PFAS in cosmetic products: an INCI list analysis and critical appraisal of current regulatory frameworks

Article References: Vincent-Graindorge, M., & Ripoll, L. (2026). Declared versus actual presence of PFAS in cosmetic products: an INCI list analysis and critical appraisal of current regulatory frameworks. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 33(30), 15883-15896. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-026-38214-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11356-026-38214-9

Keywords: PFAS, cosmetics, INCI, fluorine, fluorphlogopite, regulation, dermal exposure, total fluorine, extractable organic fluorine, OECD, forever chemicals, personal care products

The scale of the exposure problem is difficult to overstate. Pharmaceuticals such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs, antidepressants, antiepileptics, and hormones are deliberately engineered to trigger biological responses at vanishingly small doses, and they retain that potency once they reach rivers, estuaries, and coastal waters. Personal care products—antimicrobials, preservatives, fragrances, surfactants, and ultraviolet filters—pour continuously into domestic and industrial wastewater. Endocrine-disrupting compounds such as bisphenol A, nonylphenol, estradiol, and 17-ethinylestradiol can interfere with hormonal and cell-signaling pathways even at environmental concentrations. Because wastewater treatment plants were never designed to strip out these molecules, effluent-dominated waters carry a chronic chemical burden. In the Red Sea’s sewage-influenced coastal zones, for example, caffeine has been measured at 62 to over 3000 nanograms per liter, with total pharmaceutical and personal care product concentrations exceeding 10 micrograms per liter at the most contaminated sites.

What makes microalgae such powerful sentinels is their biology. With short generation times, enormous surface area-to-volume ratios, and constant immersion in the surrounding water, they absorb and respond to dissolved contaminants faster than almost any other organism. The review’s quantitative tables reveal just how variable—and how alarming—the toxicity can be. In the standard freshwater test species Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata, the antibacterial agent triclosan produced 72-hour growth inhibition at concentrations as low as 0.0018 micromolar, among the lowest thresholds recorded for any contaminant class. Yet in a mixed microalgal consortium, triclosan’s 72-hour toxicity value was 8 milligrams per liter, a difference of several orders of magnitude. Nonylphenol proved dramatically more toxic to the estuarine alga Tetraselmis sp. than chemically related endocrine disruptors, with inhibition concentrations of 0.190 to 0.313 milligrams per liter compared with more than 2 milligrams per liter for bisphenol A and 17-ethinylestradiol.

Perhaps the most technically consequential finding concerns photosynthesis, the machinery that converts light into the chemical energy driving the entire cell. Chlorophyll a emerges as the earliest and most consistent biochemical casualty: antibiotics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, antidepressants, and endocrine disruptors all deplete it across a wide range of species. In Microcystis flos-aquae, exposure to the antibiotics florfenicol and thiamphenicol cut chlorophyll content by roughly 46 and 56 percent respectively, signaling profound disruption of the photosynthetic apparatus. The damage extends deep into Photosystem II, the oxygen-producing reaction center most vulnerable to photo-oxidative attack. The antidepressant fluoxetine slashed the maximum quantum yield of Photosystem II—measured as the Fv/Fm ratio—by approximately 81 percent in Raphidocelis subcapitata at just 15 to 30 micrograms per liter. Mechanistically, many of these compounds block electron transfer between the quinone acceptors QA and QB, destabilize the oxygen-evolving complex, and dismantle thylakoid membranes, choking the flow of energy before any visible growth decline appears.

Beneath the photosynthetic damage lies what the review identifies as the central toxicity hub: oxidative stress. Contaminants as structurally different as ibuprofen, clarithromycin, bisphenol A, and nonylphenol converge on the same endpoint—overproduction of reactive oxygen species, including superoxide radicals, hydrogen peroxide, hydroxyl radicals, and singlet oxygen. When electron transport is jammed, absorbed light energy has nowhere to go and leaks into the formation of these destructive molecules. They attack polyunsaturated fatty acids in cell membranes, triggering lipid peroxidation that is tracked by rising levels of malondialdehyde, a standard biomarker. In Scenedesmus obliquus, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs induced exactly this cascade, degrading membranes, bleaching pigments, and collapsing photosynthetic efficiency. Under the microscope, exposed cells show chloroplast swelling, thylakoid disorganization, vacuolization, and mitochondrial abnormalities. At the molecular level, reactive oxygen species oxidize DNA—producing strand breaks and mutations—and oxidize amino acid residues in proteins, including the Photosystem II reaction-center proteins sitting closest to the sites of radical generation.

Microalgae are not passive victims, however. The review catalogs a sophisticated defensive arsenal: enzymatic antioxidants such as superoxide dismutase, catalase, peroxidase, ascorbate peroxidase, and glutathione reductase surge into action upon exposure; non-enzymatic scavengers including carotenoids, glutathione, and phenolic compounds mop up radicals; non-photochemical quenching dissipates excess light energy as heat before it can damage reaction centers; and extracellular polymeric substances bind contaminants before they reach the cell surface. Some species even display hormesis—low doses of ethinylestradiol, ciprofloxacin, sulfamethoxazole, amoxicillin, bezafibrate, tamoxifen, and certain anti-inflammatory drugs actually stimulated growth, apparently by providing an auxiliary carbon source or priming stress-response pathways. But the defenses have hard limits. Under chronic exposure or high concentrations, antioxidant enzymes themselves become oxidized and inactivated, and the cell tips from adaptation into irreversible injury. Repeated dosing with clarithromycin, for instance, produced greater reactive oxygen species accumulation than a single pulse, revealing cumulative damage that standard 72-hour assays completely miss.

That gap between acute testing and chronic reality is one of the review’s sharpest criticisms of the field. A ten-day exposure to carbamazepine at 200 milligrams per liter inhibited growth by 97 percent in Scenedesmus obliquus, yet the same concentration suppressed Chlamydomonas mexicana by only 30 percent, and Spirulina platensis showed just 34 percent inhibition at 100 milligrams per liter. Species identity, exposure duration, and endpoint selection all reshape toxicity rankings, which is why the authors warn against generalizing results from the handful of freshwater chlorophytes—Chlorella vulgaris, Scenedesmus species, and Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata—that dominate the literature. Marine and estuarine microalgae, cyanobacteria, and natural biofilms remain drastically understudied, even though stream biofilm experiments showed diphenhydramine suppressing algal biomass by 18 to 81 percent and photosynthetic performance by up to 99 percent. Single-compound tests compound the problem, since real waters carry mixtures that can act synergistically; co-exposure to pharmaceuticals and microplastics, for example, generates more oxidative damage than either contaminant alone.

The biotechnological implications cut in two directions at once. Contaminant stress often forces microalgae to redirect carbon from cell division into storage lipids, carotenoids, and protective secondary metabolites, creating a growth–metabolite trade-off: biomass yield falls while the content of commercially valuable compounds such as beta-carotene, astaxanthin, lutein, and zeaxanthin rises. Mild stress could therefore be exploited as a production strategy, provided contaminant accumulation in the harvested biomass is carefully monitored, since pharmaceuticals and their transformation products may lodge in cells destined for food, feed, or nutraceutical markets. At the same time, microalgae’s capacity to uptake, biotransform, and degrade these pollutants—mediated partly by cytochrome P450 enzymes—positions them as workhorses for phycoremediation. Pilot thin-layer reactors fed real wastewater laced with antibiotics and analgesics maintained biomass productivity and chlorophyll fluorescence without measurable harm, hinting that resilient algal communities could simultaneously clean water and generate feedstock for biofuels, biofertilizers, and bioplastics within a circular bioeconomy.

The review closes with a three-pronged roadmap for the decade ahead. First, ecotoxicology must embrace ecological realism: chronic multigenerational exposures, environmentally relevant mixtures, and a much broader taxonomic spread that includes marine and estuarine species. Second, omics technologies—genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics—should be deployed to map the genes and networks governing contaminant uptake, detoxification, and hormesis, enabling the design of tolerant strains through synthetic biology and adaptive laboratory evolution. Third, algal biorefineries should be engineered around circular bioeconomy principles, coupling contaminant removal with nutrient recovery, carbon capture, and biomass valorization, backed by rigorous life-cycle assessments and techno-economic analysis. If those priorities are met, the very organisms now serving as early-warning indicators of chemical pollution could become the foundation of a sustainable technology that turns wastewater from an environmental liability into a resource stream.

Subject of Research: Ecotoxicological effects of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and endocrine-disrupting compounds on microalgae

Article Title: Ecotoxicological effects of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and endocrine disruptors on microalgae: a comprehensive review

Article References: Ecotoxicological effects of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and endocrine disruptors on microalgae: a comprehensive review. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1186/s44315-026-00064-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44315-026-00064-y

Keywords: microalgae, emerging contaminants, pharmaceuticals, personal care products, endocrine disruptors, oxidative stress, photosynthesis, ecotoxicology, phycoremediation, reactive oxygen species, algal biotechnology, wastewater treatment

The research, conducted by Luigina Canova, Andrea Bobbio and Anna Maria Manganelli of the University of Padua, rests on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, one of the most widely used frameworks in social psychology for explaining voluntary human actions. The theory holds that a behaviour is driven by the intention to perform it, and that intention is in turn shaped by three forces: attitude, the person’s evaluative judgment of the behaviour; subjective norm, the perceived expectations of family and friends; and perceived behavioural control, the sense that one has the means and ability to act. Crucially, the theory also allows for background factors, deeper values and dispositions that feed into these beliefs without acting on behaviour directly.

The Padua team selected two such background factors for scrutiny: the perceived environmental value and the perceived health value of green products. Green personal care products in the study included shampoo, soap and deodorants made from organic farming components free of synthetic pesticides, fertilisers and genetically modified organisms, while green home care products covered laundry detergents, floor and glass cleaners and dishwashing liquids. The market context is striking. The global green personal care market is forecast to grow by 12.37 billion US dollars between 2024 and 2029, and trade in household green cleaning products rose from 5.14 billion dollars in 2023 to 5.49 billion in 2024, with further growth expected to reach 8.49 billion by 2030.

To test their extended model, the researchers ran two parallel two-wave surveys between October and December 2023, distributed through the Qualtrics platform. Roughly one hundred master’s students in psychology at the University of Padua recruited friends, relatives and acquaintances, with each participant assigned to only one of the two studies. In the first wave, respondents answered questions measuring perceived environmental and health values, attitudes, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and intention. One month later they reported their intention again and, crucially, whether they had actually purchased green products during the intervening weeks. After attrition, the final combined sample comprised 766 adults, 68 percent of them women, with a mean age of 37 years.

The statistical machinery behind the study was rigorous. Confirmatory factor analyses of six latent constructs and twenty indicators produced good fit indices in both studies, and tests for common method variance suggested it did not distort the results. Regression analyses conducted with the PROCESS macro, using bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals based on five thousand resamples, tested the direct and indirect pathways of the model, with gender and age included as covariates. The measurement work paid off: the models explained roughly half of the variance in purchase intention in both studies, and between 24 and 28 percent of the variance in self-reported future purchasing behaviour, respectable figures for a psychological prediction of real-world action.

The results were consistent across both product categories in their broad outlines. Perceived environmental and health values each explained about a third of the variance in attitudes toward buying green products, and both fed indirectly into intention and behaviour through the classic Theory of Planned Behaviour constructs. Attitude emerged as the strongest single predictor of intention, followed by perceived behavioural control and subjective norm. But one value clearly outshone the other: perceived health value showed a stronger association with attitude, and in the personal care study it also maintained a direct link to intention, suggesting that consumers who believe green products enhance well-being are especially primed to buy them, partly independent of their general evaluation of the behaviour.

The most theoretically interesting finding concerned the notorious intention-behaviour gap. Meta-analyses across pro-environmental and health behaviours consistently show that intentions explain far more variance in themselves, around 50 percent, than behaviours do, around 30 percent. The Padua team examined whether the temporal stability of intention, measured by comparing intention scores at the two waves one month apart, moderated this gap. It did, and dramatically. For green personal care products, the effect of intention on behaviour was strongest among people whose intentions remained stable over the month, with a standardised coefficient of 0.65, compared with 0.32 among those with unstable intentions. For household products the pattern was even starker: among low-stability participants the intention-behaviour relationship was not statistically significant at all.

Not every result was symmetrical across the two product categories. Perceived behavioural control directly predicted future purchasing only for green home care products, which the authors attribute to the difficulty consumers may face in finding and recognising these items in retail settings, a market that remains smaller than that for green personal care. Demographic patterns also emerged: women expressed more favourable attitudes and stronger intentions toward green personal care products, while women and older participants reported greater perceived control over buying green household products, a pattern the researchers link to gender roles and greater familiarity with household shopping. The authors caution, however, that some indirect effects were statistically significant but small, and should be interpreted carefully.

The study is not without limitations, which the authors acknowledge candidly. The samples were convenience samples dominated by young adult women with medium-high education and income in a culturally homogeneous region of north-eastern Italy, the design was correlational, all measures were self-reported and vulnerable to social desirability bias, and the analyses were not preregistered. Still, the practical implications are concrete. Marketers should emphasise both environmental and health benefits, with certified toxicity and dermatological standards bolstering perceived health value; campaigns should engage family and friendship networks, given the weight of subjective norms; and retailers should improve availability, placement and pricing to strengthen perceived control. Above all, the findings suggest that fostering stable, protected intentions, rather than fleeting enthusiasm, may be the key to converting green goodwill into green purchases, a small but measurable step toward sustainable development goals.

Subject of Research: Psychosocial determinants, including perceived environmental and health values and intention stability, of purchasing green personal and household care products under the Theory of Planned Behaviour.

Article Title: The Purchase of Green Personal and Household Care Products: The Predictive Contribution of Perceived Environmental and Health Values and Intention Stability in the Theory of Planned Behaviour

Article References: Canova, L., Bobbio, A., & Manganelli, A. M. (2026). The Purchase of Green Personal and Household Care Products: The Predictive Contribution of Perceived Environmental and Health Values and Intention Stability in the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Trends in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-026-00524-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s43076-026-00524-9

Keywords: green products, Theory of Planned Behaviour, consumer behaviour, intention-behaviour gap, intention stability, perceived health value, perceived environmental value, sustainable consumption, household care products, personal care products, environmental psychology, Italy