The preservatives, entry by entry

The short read

• The Regulation keeps a positive list for the colourants and another for the UV filters, and of the classes with a page here this is the only one governed by one of them. Everywhere else on the site an annex reference marks a restriction; in this class it marks permission, and the cap is the condition of the entry rather than a caution about it.

• A handful of entries here are named in no annex at all, which is not an oversight. A preservative is defined by intent - Article 2(1)(l) reads “exclusively or mainly intended to inhibit the development of micro-organisms in the cosmetic product” - so a substance with an antimicrobial effect can be in a formula lawfully while declared for another purpose, with the preserving left to something on the list.

• The grades run the full width of the site's scale, and a substantial share of these entries are in no mask in the catalogue at all. They are documented for reference - the banned ones among them - because knowing what should not be on a label is half of reading one. Almost every preservative that is on a label sits late on it, below the point where descending order stops carrying information.

All 28 preservative entries

Widest reach first. The grade and the EU status are separate columns because they are separate questions: a capped Annex V preservative can be the calmest thing on a label, and an unrestricted plant extract can be the entry most worth reading. Every one of these entries has its own page, with the sources behind it.

11 of these entries are in no mask in this catalogue. They are documented for reference - EU-restricted substances kept so a reader knows what should not be on a label, and ingredients that turn up in skincare but not in these masks. The EU watchlist collects the restricted ones.

Where this class sits on a pack

An ingredient list is not in a random order. Article 19(1)(g) of Regulation (EC) 1223/2009 requires it to run “in descending order of weight of the ingredients at the time they are added”, and then allows everything under 1% to be listed “in any order” after the rest. So the top of a list is a statement about quantity and the bottom of it is not - which is the ≈1% line the Panel draws on every product page.

Counted across every appearance of this class in the catalogue, and measured as a fraction of each list’s own length so a 4-entry pack and an 81-entry pack count equally, the preservative entries sit a median 78% of the way down a list, and 87% of those appearances fall below the ≈1% line. Where that share is high, position has stopped telling a reader anything about how much is in the pack.

Every class in the encyclopaedia, side by side

The encyclopaedia sorts its entries into 24 classes and 10 have a page: a class needs 15 entries to carry one, below which a landing page is a re-headed filter view. “Other” is excluded whatever its size, because a bucket cannot be a landing page. Every figure here is counted across all 24, so any comparison in the copy above is scoped against a set you can see rather than against the ones that happened to ship.

An entry has exactly one class, so the entries column sums to 329. The masks column does not sum to 219 and is not meant to - a single list prints entries from a great many classes at once.