IFRA reassures fragrance industry about upcoming regulatory changes

Members of the association, which cover approximately 90 per cent of the fragrance market, must comply by the rules set down by the body.

Since the introduction of the Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) in 2005, a new approach for evaluating the sensitizing potential of fragrance materials, changes seen to IFRA standards have been relatively extensive and some industry members have criticized the body for being too restrictive.

This year, a few weeks before the changes are to be published the body has reassured industry that changes will ‘hardly affect the palettes of perfumers’.

According to the Association, rumours have emerged regarding the content of the amendment which state the changes will affect furocoumarins and methyleugenol. IFRA has stated that this is not the case.

Seven changes to be announced​

Although details of the actual changes will not be announced until the second half of the month, IFRA has stated there will be seven changes overall.

Three new standards based on the QRA will be made, which regard use levels of ingredients, one already existing standard will be revised, and one prohibition will be made.

In addition, what IFRA refers to as a specification will be introduced, which communications director Stephen Weller explained is related to the level of purity of an ingredient.

Director General of the association, Jean-Pierre Houri, called the amendments 'light' and said this was due to the end of the changeover period to the new QRA.

“Previous years have seen quite heavy amendments due to the change over to our new QRA approach. However, this is nearly complete and is reflected in this year’s very light amendment,”​ explained Houri.

“We expect the amendments to be much less dramatic in future and to be a similar size to this year’s or smaller,”​ Weller told CosmeticsDesign-Europe.com.

He said the industry had received the QRA well, now that the change over is nearly finished.

“It was a lot of hard work and initially a lot of reformulations, but now it is done the standards will be more relevant and accurate according to the actual use in different product categories and this the industry understands will benefit everyone,”​ he said.