Annual Report of the National Cosmetics Supervision and Sampling Inspection in 2021

The supervision and sampling inspection of cosmetics is an important means of post-marketing supervision of cosmetics, which is of great significance to discover the safety risks of cosmetics in time and to investigate the illegal behaviors of cosmetics according to law.

In 2021, NMPA organized national cosmetics supervision and sampling inspections nationwide in accordance with the Regulations on Supervision and Administration of Cosmetics and other laws and regulations. In this supervision and inspection activity, NMPA severely crack down on illegal activities including cosmetics adding banned raw materials, and cosmetics production and operation not conform to mandatory national standards or technical specifications, to help improve the construction of cosmetics standard system and strive to create a safe and orderly cosmetics market environment.

Overall Situation

In 2021, local medical products administrations adhered to the problem-oriented approach and focused on regulatory concerns, with identifying problems and preventing and controlling risks as the main goal. Products and sites with high risks were selected as the sampling focus. The administrations carried out sampling inspections on 11 categories of cosmetics, including hair dyes, shampoo and hair care products, makeup, sunscreen products, anti-acne products, facial masks, moisturizing and general skin care products, tightening and anti-wrinkle general skin care products, children's products, anti-freckle /whitening products and talcum powder, with a total of 20,245 batches of products. After inspected by 33 cosmetics inspection institutions according to the Safety and Technical Standards for Cosmetics (2015), 19,847 batches of products were found meet the requirements, with the qualified rate reaching 98.03%.

Situation of Sampling

Figure 1 shows the quantity and batches of cosmetic samples inspected by local medical products administrations in each province (autonomous region or municipality). Sampling is mainly carried out by field sampling and network sampling; The distribution of sampling in different administrative divisions is shown in Figure 2; The distribution of origin of samples is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 1 Distribution of cosmetics samples in different regions

Notes: The numbers in the figure are the number of sampling batches in each province (region, city). The color from light to dark indicates the number of sampling batches from low to high.

Figure 2 Distribution of Samples in Different Administrative Divisions

Figure 3 Distribution of Sample Origin (as per the location of cosmetics manufacturers)

Notes: Other provinces in China include Jiangxi, Hainan, Yunnan, Henan and other 16 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities).

Inspection Situation

Among the 11 categories of cosmetics sampled, 9 categories, including talcum powder and freckle-removing/whitening cosmetics, achieved an overall pass rate of more than 98%. (See Figure 4)

Figure 4 Qualified Rates of 11 Categories of Cosmetics subject to Random Inspection

The Cosmetics Supervision and Administration Regulations came into force in 2021. To support the implementation of the Regulations, various regulations and normative documents are being formulated and issued successively. NMPA will continue to carry out supervision and sampling inspection for cosmetics in accordance with the law, strive to improve the capacity and level of supervision, promote high-quality development of the industry, and make greater efforts to ensure the safety of cosmetics.

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