SC Johnson Gives Families the Whole Story on Skin Allergens

You might be surprised to know that companies don’t have to tell you about all the skin allergens in the products they make. In the European Union, disclosure of 26 skin allergens is required. In the United States and most other countries, there are no rules requiring allergen transparency. And to us, that didn’t seem right.

So, in May of 2017, we shared a list of the 368 skin allergens that might appear in our products, and a commitment to share product-specific details soon. By the end of the year, we had added them to our ingredient lists on WhatsInsideSCJohnson.com for more than 8,700 products.

Why would we go to such lengths? We believe in telling the whole story.

Fragrance Allergens and More: The Whole Story

With our skin allergen transparency, SC Johnson has again gone beyond our industry and beyond current regulations for ingredient disclosure.

Skin allergens can appear among fragrance ingredients and in other formulas as well. Other companies use similar ingredients to those that we use, they simply don’t communicate the details about skin allergies. We consider it helpful to disclose these ingredients, particularly for people with a pre-existing skin allergy.

As our Chairman and CEO, Fisk Johnson, explained, “For us, transparency is a matter of principle. We’re interested in helping people make the best choices for their families. Just like when we started listing preservatives, dyes and fragrances, we didn’t stop with the industry standard. We want to tell the whole story. This is just the next step we are taking in our journey to be more and more transparent.” 

SC Johnson Ingredient Transparency Wins Praise

Our announcement was greeted with praise from transparency advocates. Ken Cook, President and Co-Founder of Environmental Working Group, said “By taking these steps, SC Johnson will help millions of consumers be smarter about chemicals in cleaning products that have the potential to cause allergic skin responses. And SC Johnson is once again raising the bar for other companies. This level of transparency is sweeping across other industries and is rapidly becoming the new normal for companies, like SC Johnson, who place a premium on giving consumers more, rather than less, ingredient information.”

For us, it’s simply about doing what’s right. It’s a lot of work to communicate the low levels of skin allergens in products, but it’s worth it. We’re continuing on a path to provide more and more information to the people who buy our products, so they can make choices that are best for them and their families.

Determining the List of Skin Allergens to Disclose

To determine our comprehensive list of fragrance and non-fragrance skin allergens, SC Johnson scientists analyzed more than 3,000 data sets from public and industry sources for skin allergens identified on country regulatory lists, fragrance industry lists, the European Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety reviews, dermatology clinic data and individual supplier safety data sheets. 

Then, we shared our findings for validation with experts in the fields of dermatology, immuno-toxicology, fragrance toxicology and allergens. The expert panel that validated the study methods included: 

• David Basketter, D.Sc., independent consultant and recognized international expert on allergy; former Director of Safety Research, Unilever 
• David Bickers, M.D., Chairman, Department of Dermatology, Columbia University 
• Peter Cadby, Ph.D., former Head of Product Safety at Firmenich 
• Axel Schnuch, M.D., University of Göttingen; retired Head of IVDK (Information Network of Departments of Dermatology) 
• Peter Thorne, Ph.D., Head of Department of Occupational & Environmental Health, University of Iowa; Director of Environmental Health Sciences Research Center

Currently, the consumer goods industry uses 3,700 fragrance ingredients published by the International Fragrance Association. However, we exclude about 2,400 because there may be a lack of basic safety information or they don’t meet a high enough standard. 

As a result, we specify for our product developers that when creating a new product or updating an existing one, the fragrance has to come from our limited SC Johnson Fragrance Palette of 1,300 components. For this skin allergen disclosure program, we reviewed both natural and synthetic skin allergens in our products. In many cases, naturals can have more skin allergens than synthetics.

How Allergies Work: The Facts about Skin Allergens

A skin allergen is a substance that the immune system recognizes as a threat and attacks. The presence of a skin allergen does not mean, however, that it will automatically cause a person to develop a skin allergy or a skin allergy reaction. 
 
What matters is the dose or the amount of exposure. The consensus among the scientific community is that a dose of less than 0.01 percent is unlikely to cause a reaction for most skin allergens in rinse-off products. Our product-specific skin allergen transparency will disclose skin allergens down to 0.01 percent, the same standard as the European Union.
 
You can read more about skin allergens and how they work in this helpful article from Scientific American Custom Media.
 
At SC Johnson, we take care to use ingredients with skin allergens only in amounts so low that it would be highly unlikely to create a new skin allergy or trigger a skin allergy reaction.