The Personal Care Products Council reports a new significant enhancement of the Cosmetic Ingredient Review Panel (CIR) that will expand the capacity of the CIR’s Expert Panel and staff to assess the safety of cosmetic ingredients.  According to The Council, this action will further accelerate the pace of cosmetic ingredient safety reviews and ensure that the program continues to keep pace with advances in scientific safety assessment processes as they emerge.  
           
Founded more than 30 years ago, CIR is an independent, nonprofit panel of world-renowned scientists and physicians that thoroughly reviews and assesses the safety of ingredients used in cosmetics worldwide.  Both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Federation of America participate in the program by serving as liaison members.  

In an open, public process, the CIR gathers published and unpublished safety data for review and publishes the results in the open, peer-reviewed scientific literature. By the end of the year, the panel will have completed the review of more than 1,500 personal care products ingredients representing most of the materials used to formulate cosmetics today.

Improvements to the program that will be implemented over the remainder of the year and fully instituted by 2009 include:  
 

According to The Council, these enhancements will further strengthen and expand a safety program that has consistently served consumers of personal care products for more than 30 years.  When fully implemented, these enhancements will enable the panel to review up to 400 cosmetic ingredients each year.  The steps are part of an ongoing, multi-year effort that began in 2006 to strengthen and enhance the CIR.