PFAS Litigation: Another Headache For The Beauty Industry

For years, cosmetics and other personal care companies have faced calls for "cleaner" products and more transparent labeling. And every day, new ingredients get added to the "naughty" list. Recently, per- and polyfluoroalkul substances (PFAS)—a group of manmade chemicals used primarily for their conditioning properties—have come under fire. Even as research indicating the dangers of PFAS is limited, the widespread use of PFAS has led to state restrictions on use in personal care products, and proposed legislation that would ban PFAS in cosmetics on a federal level.

Consistent with that trend is a spate of consumer-driven putative class actions against cosmetics companies for alleged use and failure to disclose the presence of PFAS in their products. By and large, the alleged harm is economic: rather than claiming that they have suffered personal injury, plaintiffs insist that they would not have purchased them (or paid as much) if they had known about PFAS in the