Interview with Stephen Kirk about Cosmetic Ingredient Allergens

This episode featured an episode with Stephen Kirk on cosmetic allergens. Stephen is a regulatory toxicologist by vocation. He spent 14 years working in regulatory toxicology in the pharmaceutical space, eventually moving into the cosmetics space while working for Boots Pharmaceuticals, reviewing the safety of ingredients and finished products. After more than 20 years here, he left Boots to open his own consultancy for the UK cosmetic industry, on the safety and regulatory aspects of finished products. He has a broad knowledge base about cosmetic product safety for the whole product lifecycle and was the perfect person to take us through this topic. We covered what cosmetic allergens are, how they’re determined and regulated, how they impact consumers, the challenge with many natural ingredients, what the claims ‘hypoallergenic’ and ‘dermatologically tested’ mean on a label, and so much more. This was an information-packed episode with so many important insights.