The United States government has been cracking down on cosmetics in recent years. With the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act (MoCRA) taking effect in December 2023, cosmetics companies must now meet new regulatory requirements, including facility and product registration with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While beauty brands work to meet these new requirements, the FDA has simultaneously begun revising sunscreen regulations following their 2019 findings that certain ingredients can be absorbed through the skin into the body. These revisions now include requirements for animal testing of chemical sunscreen ingredients, despite years of existing human data supporting their safety.“In the time since sunscreen ingredients were originally evaluated, new data have shown that many of them—which were previously thought to stay on the surface of the skin—are actually absorbed through the skin and into the body,” an FDA representative explained to BeautyMatter.“This means that we need to know what these absorbed ingredients do when they are in the human body,” the representative continued. “The FDA routinely evaluates drugs that are absorbed into the body to ensure that the benefits of these products outweigh any potential risks that result from absorption. While many drugs do not show risks from systemic exposure, it is not possible to predict these potential risks under any scientifically valid and reliable method at this time aside from animal studies.