Studies have linked cosmetics marketed to women of color — and the products used in nail and beauty salons by workers who are often immigrants or women of color — to higher exposures to toxic chemicals, including endocrine disruptors and known carcinogens. The Cosmetic Safety for Communities of Color and Professional Salon Workers Act would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to fund research on those disparities, support the development of safer chemical alternatives, and establish two national resource centers — one focused on “beauty justice” for affected communities and one focused on the health and safety of salon workers. It would also require OSHA to issue a standard so that cosmetic manufacturers, distributors, and salon employers provide hazard safety data sheets for professional-use products in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, and other languages on request. Separately, the bill brings synthetic braids under the FDA's definition of a cosmetic and requires warning labels on braids that do not meet new FDA safety standards yet to be written. Total authorized funding is roughly $45 million over five years across research grants and the two new resource centers.
Average Household Impact
- FDA oversight of synthetic braids — Braids brought under federal cosmetic regulation with new safety standards and warning labels for noncompliant products
Transparency & Accountability
- Multilingual safety-data-sheet requirement — Cosmetic manufacturers, distributors, and salon employers must provide SDS in English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, plus on request
- State authority on synthetic-braid disclosure — States retain power to set stronger braid-transparency rules than the federal floor
- Annual reporting from new resource centers — Both new HHS-funded resource centers must submit annual activity reports to Congress, posted publicly
Congressional Summary
Cosmetic Safety for Communities of Color and Professional Salon Workers Act of 2025This bill establishes programs and requirements to address the effects of harmful chemicals in cosmetics on consumers and salon workers, particularly in communities of color, and subjects synthetic braids to regulation by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).Specifically, the FDA must establish safety standards for synthetic braids. Synthetic braids that do not meet such standards must be labeled with a specified warning.The bill also requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to conduct (or award grants for) research on harmful chemicals most commonly found in cosmetics marketed to and used by women and girls of color and professional nail, hair, and beauty salon workers. HHS must publish reports summarizing this research, including recommendations for reducing potentially unsafe exposures.In addition, the FDA must award grants to support the development of alternative, safer chemicals that may be used in place of harmful chemicals in cosmetics.HHS must also establish, through grants to eligible entities, national resource centers on beauty justice and salon worker health and safety to educate consumers and salon workers, respectively, about harmful chemicals in cosmetics.Finally, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration must require manufacturers and importers of professional cosmetic products to make safety data sheets available in multiple languages for cosmetics that include certain hazardous chemicals. Employers, including salon operators, must make the relevant safety data sheet available to any employee exposed to a product subject to this requirement.
Details
- Congress
- 119th
- Chamber
- House
- Status
- summarized
- Action
- Introduced in House
- Action Date
- 2025-07-16
- Date Added
- 2026-05-27
- Source
- Congress.gov →
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