This article was written by Zoe Rom, journalist and podcast host, in collaboration with Osmia Skincare.

Clean beauty is one of the most confusing—and least regulated—terms in skincare, which makes it surprisingly hard to know what’s actually safe.

Ask ten beauty brands what “clean” means and you’ll get ten different answers. Sephora has a list. Credo Beauty has a different one, banning over 2,700 ingredients. EWG has its own scoring system, which doesn’t always agree with either. The brand you’re currently holding has whatever framework its marketing team assembled this quarter. None of these lists agree with each other. None of them are federally regulated. The word “clean” has no legal definition in cosmetics anywhere in the United States.

Sarah Villafranco has been thinking about this problem for a long time. Before founding Osmia Skincareshe spent a decade as a board-certified emergency medicine physician, a profession that trains you, above almost anything else, to ask what the evidence actually says. She’s spent fifteen-plus years watching an industry deploy “clean” as a marketing term while the underlying science gets murkier, not clearer. “I honestly think it sucks to be a consumer right now,” she said, “because it’s just so hard—without dedicating years of your life to study—to know what ingredients should feel safe to you and what shouldn’t.”

That’s not a disclaimer. It’s the reason Osmia exists, and it’s what makes Villafranco a useful guide through a space that has gotten very good at dressing anxiety up as safety.

Is Clean Beauty Regulated?

The word “clean” has no legal definition in cosmetics in the United States. That means brands, retailers, and rating systems are all operating with their own criteria—and those criteria don’t always agree. For consumers, that creates a confusing landscape where “clean” often reflects a brand’s philosophy more than a standardized safety benchmark.

What Is the Appeal to Nature Fallacy in Skincare?

There’s a documented cognitive bias at the root of all of this called the “appeal to nature fallacy”: the tendency to treat “natural” as shorthand for safe and “synthetic” as shorthand for harmful. Research has found that framing products as “natural” significantly boosts purchase intent independent of any actual product differences, and, in a genuinely wild finding, that people rate “natural”-branded cigarettes as meaningfully safer than regular ones despite being chemically identical. The label is doing all the work. The ingredient list is beside the point.

The heuristic isn’t totally wrong, which is part of what makes it so sticky. Simpler formulations are often gentler on sensitive skin. But when this shortcut gets applied indiscriminately it stops being a useful rule of thumb and starts being a marketing strategy. Arsenic is natural. Poison ivy is natural. Botulinum toxin (the active ingredient in Botox) is among the most acutely toxic substances on earth and is entirely natural. Meanwhile, a molecule with a twelve-syllable INCI name might be derived from an oat. The provenance of an ingredient tells you very little about how it actually behaves in a formula. That determination requires toxicology, dose, and context—not vibes and a marketing budget.

Is Natural Skincare Actually Safer?

Villafranco’s take on the word “natural” is worth sitting with:

“It’s not really that gray to me, because I’ve taken such a deep dive on these ingredients… the derivation process can be pretty long. At some point you’re like, this is pretty far from coconut oil.”

Essential oil production involves distillation, steam separation, and significant processing, it’s not a sprig of lavender smooshed against your face. Where naturally-derived ends and synthesized begins is genuinely murky, and brands exploit that murkiness constantly.

That’s why brands like Osmia, who go beyond the window-dressing of “clean” beauty with radical transparency, and a scientific approach to formulating their products is so refreshing. When “natural” ceases to be a useful distinction, it matters even more what ingredients brands use in their products.

The ingredient category Villafranco finds most concerning, and that most consumers have never heard of, is ethoxylates: ingredients treated with ethylene oxide, a known human carcinogen, likely to be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane, itself a probable carcinogen and environmental groundwater contaminant. Here’s the inconvenient part: a lot of brands that market themselves as clean use ethoxylated ingredients without realizing it. A commonly cited example is phenoxyethanol, a preservative found in many products marketed as a natural alternative to parabens.

“It can be naturally derived in that you can derive it from petroleum, you can also derive it from plant material, but it’s still getting treated with ethylene oxide, and it is still potentially giving off 1,4-dioxane,” says Villafranco.

That’s what the clean beauty checklist tends to miss. The question isn’t whether something sounds like it came from a plant, it’s what it becomes in the process of formulation, at what concentration, and in what context. Osmia’s own avoided ingredients listparabens, phthalates, sulfates, petrochemicals, ethoxylates, synthetic color, and synthetic fragrance, was assembled through years of reading primary literature, not by following a trend.

Clean Beauty Marketing vs Ingredient Transparency

None of this is an argument that cosmetic ingredient safety doesn’t warrant real scrutiny. The FDA’s fragrance loophole, which lets brands list dozens of undisclosed compounds simply as “fragrance”, is a genuine transparency problem. PFAS have documented bioaccumulation concerns. These distinctions are real and worth caring about.

The problem is that “clean beauty” collapses all of these distinctions into a single aesthetic. Ingredients with strong safety records land on the same exclusion list as legitimately concerning ones. The nuance disappears, replaced by a feeling; the feeling of having made the right choice, wearing the costume of safety. Formulation transparency means something different: here’s what’s in this product, here’s why it’s there, here’s what the evidence says.

According to Villafranco, “I will always try to choose the fewest and best quality ingredients I can. What can I put in here that my skin really needs, and what can I leave out that it doesn’t?” That’s a different question than what we can remove from the label to make it look better.”

How to Evaluate Skincare Ingredients Based on Evidence

The distinction that matters is between evidence-based caution and anxiety-driven consumption. One starts with a specific concern, checks the actual evidence, and makes a reasoned call. The other starts with a feeling of threat, finds an exclusion list that validates it, and calls that safety. The wellness industry has made a fortune on the second one. What Villafranco has spent over a decade building is the first one.

“We’re a skin health company. We really just want to try to get people feeling comfortable and healthy in their skin. And my take is if you feel healthy in your skin, you’re going to look awesome,” says Villafranco.

Not younger. Not “cleaner.” Healthy. The difference might sound subtle, but it’s the difference between a company preying on your insecurity to sell creams and serums, or a brand that’s genuinely invested in creating products that meet the needs of real people. (And helping them smell incredible while doing it).

FAQ: Clean Beauty and Ingredient Safety

What does “clean beauty” actually mean?

There is no standardized or regulated definition of “clean beauty” in the United States. The term is used differently by every brand and retailer.

Is natural skincare safer than synthetic skincare?

Not necessarily. Some natural ingredients can be irritating or toxic, while many synthetic ingredients have strong safety data. Safety depends on formulation, dose, and context.

Why is “fragrance” considered a concern in skincare?

The term “fragrance” can represent dozens of undisclosed chemicals, some of which may be allergenic or disruptive to hormone systems.

What should I look for instead of “clean” labels?

Transparency, thoughtful formulation, and a clear explanation of why ingredients are included—not just which ones are excluded.

About the Author
Zoe Rom is a journalist, podcast host, and writer covering science, endurance, and the wellness industry. She co-hosts the Your Diet Sucks podcast and writes about the intersection of health, culture, and evidence-based decision making.