🪨Talc

A soft mineral used to absorb moisture and improve texture, mined alongside asbestos. The concern is not talc itself but what it is mined next to, and testing for that contamination is not routinely required. Cosmetic grade is not the same as tested.

Of the 3,681 products we have graded, 99 are flagged for it and 1 on reported or likely evidence rather than plausibility. Blush is the worst category at 73% of what we scored there.

More than in anything else we grade. 11 of the 15 blush we scored carry a flag for it, which is 73%. The full breakdown per product is on each product page.

In the categories where it turns up most, the highest scoring products with no flag for it are Tom's of Maine Tom's of Maine Deodorant at 100, Tom's of Maine Tom's of Maine Most-Loved Deodorant Bundle at 100, Tom's of Maine Tom's of Maine Antiperspirant Deodorant at 100. Every one of those was graded on the same rubric as the products above.

Listed plainly as talc or talcum powder, which is the easy case. Pressed powders of any kind, where it is the standard filler and binder. "Cosmetic grade" on a pack, which describes fineness and purity of the mineral, not asbestos testing. It turns up in pressed powder, eyeshadow, blush and foundation, body and baby powder, and as an anti-caking agent in some tablets and foods.

The FDA has historically had no authority to require asbestos testing of cosmetic talc, and under the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act it has been working toward a standardised testing rule. Talc itself is not banned. The litigation that made this famous is about asbestos contamination from mining, not about talc as a substance.

We do not lab test. Every grade here is built from published ingredient lists, materials, certifications, brand disclosures, recalls and third party lab results where those already exist. Where a product has been independently tested we use that result and say so, and where a brand publishes nothing we score the silence rather than guessing.