They prevent troublesome wrinkles, perk up tired eyes or rejuvenate brittle hair. The range of body care products is wide. “Yet things which flatter the skin can also burden the environment. The risks of some ingredients are, however, not easy to determine. Traditional test systems have too slow an impact, particularly when it comes to those organic compounds which are hardly soluble”, notes German Environment Foundation (DBU). The Institute for Environmental Research at the Technical University of Rhine-Westphalia (RWTH) Aachen, together with the company ECT Ökotoxikologe, based at Flörsheim am Main), and the industrial association for body care and detergents (IKW, Frankfurt am Main) are therefore developing a new method, with a view to recognising environmentally-harmful ingredients in cosmetics in greater detail. "This will make it easier to determine the risk for waters, and environmentally-harmful substances can be replaced by more environmentally-friendly ones", says Dr. Fritz Brickwedde, General Secretary at the German Environment Foundation (DBU) (DBU), which is supporting the project with some 100,000 Euros.
Some 40 million chemical compounds are known today, and around 400,000 new ones are developed annually. Only a fraction are used in the cosmetic industry – amongst them the group which are hardly soluble. "They are used, for example, as additives in creams, shampoos and shower gels, in order to combine ingredients like oil and water which cannot actually be mixed", explains Dr. Andreas Schäffer of the Institute for Environmental Research at the RWTH Aachen. First applied to the skin, the substances are rinsed away after washing and showering and hence enter the waste water and sewage system, and sometimes even surface water. Their effects on plants and living beings are difficult to determine with traditional test systems.
The project sets out to develop an improved method, in order to assess the impact of hardly soluble organic compounds on the environment in a swift and efficient way. "Taking seven different materials, we are examining in the laboratory by using algae, for instance, how chemical substances might possibly behave in nature", explains Schäffer. "If the experiment is successful the members of our association can use the system throughout Germany, in order to assess the materials they use, and choose substances for their products which do not harm the environment", emphasises Birgit Huber of the IKW. Small and medium-sized companies should particularly benefit from the project, since they often do not have their own laboratories, in which they can develop such test procedures.
Source : obs/Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt; phote source: IKW
