The range of cosmetic products is very rich and diverse. Each individual product can be further defined according to the label it bears. Labels are usually an indicator of the important characteristics of an individual product, which can be defined by certification. Product certification gives users a good insight into the composition, ingredients, manufacturing process, packaging and properties of the used fabrics, as the products must follow all the requirements of a certain standard. It is because of these requirements, however, that the standards differ. The aim of our master’s thesis was to research the cosmetic products on Slovenian market, through which we wanted to evaluate the most common certificates, that appear among them and compare them with each other. We also wanted to research the less safe ingredients, present in the researched products and evaluate what impact they have on their price. We focused on body creams that are certified as natural or organic and are present on the Slovenian market. We also researched less safe ingredients in details with the help of the INCI list of product’s ingredients and Skin Deep® cosmetic database. We also assigned EWG's rating factors (hazard and data availability) to the less safe fragrances and preservatives, found in the selected products and researched how often are these ingridients found in products, based on their certificate and price. During our research, we confirmed that products from foreign manufacturers are more often present on the Slovenian market, that Cosmos and NaTrue standards have similar certification requirements and that the Slovenian standards have lower or milder requirements. As for the products themselves, we confirmed that their price depends on many parameters, including the number of less-safe ingredients, hazard assessment according to EWG classification, country of origin of the brand and the standard by which they are certified. According to the collected data we proved that products containing more less-safe ingredients have lower price than products containing less of them. We also proved that products of Slovenian manufacturers, on average have higher prices compared to foreign ones and that the price of product containing a greater number of fragrances is lower than the price of product containing less of them. Slovenian market offers a variety of cosmetic products, from the highest to the lesser quality. The results of our research show that the products offered by our market are safe regardless of whether they are certified or not. However, only the individual label on the product additionally guarantees the user that the product is as advertised.
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