China Consults on Technical Guidelines for Children Cosmetics: Stricter Ingredient Use and Labeling Requirements

China’s first regulation on children cosmetics, Supervision and Administration Provisions on Children Cosmetics (hereafter referred to as “Provisions”), came into effect on Jan. 1, 2022. Four months later, on Apr. 11, 2022, China National Institutes for Food and Drug Control released the draft of Technical Guidelines for Children Cosmetics (hereafter referred to as “Guidelines”) for public consultation. ¹ Any suggestions can be mailed to hzppjzx@nifdc.org.cn before Apr. 28, 2022.

Main Content

The Guidelines is formulated to provide technical guidance for the registrant, notifier, and Chinese domestic responsible person when applying for the registration and notification of children cosmetics, as well as provide the basis for the competent authorities’ technical review of special children cosmetics and post-notification review of general children cosmetics. The Guidelines consists of 7 parts and an annex:

It is worth noting that the Guidelines clarifies the specific requirements for safety assessment, products designed for the Chinese market, children sunscreens; more stringent requirements for ingredient use, labeling, and claims, etc. The Guidelines is in the process of translation and will be available on Apr. 20.

More Specific Requirements for Children Cosmetics Safety Assessment

According to Technical Guidelines for Cosmetic Safety Assessment, the safety assessment of children cosmetics should be exposure-oriented and carried out in combination with children’s physiological characteristics, product application methods, application areas, application amount, residues, etc., to ensure the product safety. On the basis, the Guidelines clarifies specific requirements on how to combine children’s physiological characteristics during the safety assessment, which is more convenient for enterprises to fulfill in the practice.