People are starting to become more educated on skincare and ingredients that are in them, such as parabens, and especially sunscreen. There is now more awareness that having SPF in your moisturizer, primer, or just having a regular sunscreen is very important to somebody's daily skincare routine. Whether you are an outdoor person or not, even if your job requires sitting in your office, believe it or not, that SPF 15 will still help to protect you against all the cancer causing light.
So why is it that Canada has so little products that actually have SPF in it, or maybe they do, but it's just not labelled on the container? This has always resulted in confused customers as well as sales associates. The reason is because in order for the brand to have the label of SPF on the box, the company must first register with Health Canada. In some cases, they just decide to leave the label out, and some just to not carry the products with sunscreen at all. Next time, to save yourself some time, just flip the box around and look at the ingredients to see if they have Iron Oxide or Titanium Dioxide listed, they are usually the last few ingredients. These are the two chemical ingredients for sunscreen that is most commonly used in cosmetics.
If you look at the Health Canada's website, over 500 restricted ingredients, or only a low percentage of the ingredient is allowed in cosmetics before it has to be prescribed by doctors. While in the U.S, they only have a handful of restricted ingredients, which means they have access to much more SKU numbers in retailers.
You can see the list if you visit the Health Canada Website. There will be an updated list of ingredients that you won't find in cosmetics that is retailed in Canada.
Next time you walk into a retailer, and they don't have cosmetics that have ingredients or a certain percentage of an ingredient you were looking for, it's not because the store hates you or because they suck, it's simply because Canada's strict regulations has prohibited these ingredients from crossing the border.
Now asides from the general use of titanium dioxide being used for sun protection, many products such as nail polishes, and other pigments use SPF to increase the opacity of the colours. It increases the whiteness of the cosmetic, which is why when you put on sunscreen or a moisturizer with SPF, you can see a slight white tint. So next time when you see something as odd as your eyeshadow or nail polish have sunscreen, you now know the purpose.
I guess in a way, it is a good thing that Canada is looking after Canadians and keeping out as much chemicals as they possibly can. After all, even though us cosmetic junkies do love all those products, we can't help to admit that when you flip a box around to read the ingredients, you only see a long list of unidentifiable chemical words you have never heard of.
Thank you for reading, and have a good day everyone!
Let me know what you think (:
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