What the hell is this AQUA????

Kobie

Aqua. Feckin' water. You see 'Aqua' listed in the contents section of an awful lot of products. Now I don't mind products containing a reasonble amount of water, but why this crap attempt to hide it? Isn't there a requirement that ingredients are labeled in English?

Any thoughts?

sceptre

(I'm sorry in advance for this, but you did ask)

I'll take this one Ted.

Calling it "aqua" isn't meant to confuse anyone (as most girlies I know seem to think on the rare occasions they complain about it). It's called "aqua" to comply with the International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients. For the same reason, perfume is listed as "parfum" and flavour is supposed to be "aroma". This was recommended after consultations with COLIPA, the cosmetic industry bribery-of-legislators organisation, which resulted in EU Directive 95/17/EC being passed by our lords and masters over in Brussels-sprout land. In the UK, this was implemented in regulation 6(f) to the Cosmetic Products (Safety) Regulations 1996, which implemented all the previous directives on cosmetic labelling and defined labels for 6000 ingredients so that we could all understand the ingredients equally badly. We passed a similar statutory instrument here (the European Communities (Cosmetic Products) Regulations 1997) which is a real barrel of laughs to read but basically says what I mentioned above.

COLIPA also consulted with their US equivalent, the CFTA, and worked out a joint system (which applies in most cases) so that Americans and Europeans could all understand the ingredients equally badly (except for any lucky cosmetic-users living in the Vatican who speak Latin fluently). Oddly enough one of the listings that differs between the EU and US is the very aqua that caused you to ask the question in the first place. Where differences exist it's recommended that the alternative name used for the ingredient in the other territory is placed in brackets after the name (so we'd have aqua (water) in Europe and water(aqua) in the US) but this isn't mandatory so lots of cosmetic companies just use "aqua" over here.

So one could say that it's meant to confuse but its real purpose is to unconfuse us all (or confuse us all equally) so that all companies have a system of ingredient nomenclature, competition can reign supreme, cosmetic companies are happy and we continue washing our hair, rinsing and repeating.

Sorry that you asked? OR do you want to go for broke and ask about classification of banana curvature (I found this hilarious page (read the bit at the end about shellfish & rest-breaks) while double-checking the EU directive number above)?

edited for 20% extra sarcasm / obligatory anti-EU rhetoric

Kobie

Sorry that you asked?

You know, I truly am

I'm only surprised they haven't taken to writting everything in esperanto.

Dankon.
Ĝis la revido!