KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 28 — Makeup users should be careful when buying new products as banned cosmetics are being repackaged for sale under new names, the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) has cautioned.
The agency said it has become aware that certain products that had been banned for containing prohibited ingredients that were dangerous or toxic were being registered under new names and put out for sale, Berita Harian reported today.
“We noticed the trend of companies which have received a cancellation notification on their products. We will look back at their record, identify their products and its manufacturer.
“We would target them each time they release a new product. As long as they don’t have clean records, we will continue to target products made by these companies to ensure the safety of consumers,” NPRA deputy assistant director Siti Najlaa Izzatie Muhammad Marzukhi was quoted saying.
She explained that NPRA can only ban products found to contain scheduled poisons, but not the brand.
“We can only ban products that have been detected to have fake mixtures, not the entire cosmetic brand. Other products cannot be cancelled if they show no issues,” she told the Malay daily.
She added that NPRA’s website lists products in which approval has been revoked.
According to Berita Harian, some examples of products that were recalled, but have been repackaged and renamed were whitening creams previously sold under the name Day Cream, Night Cream, Glow Cream and Treatment Cream.
All of these products contain at least one item listed in the schedule of poisons, such as hydroquinone, mercury and tretinoin.
