Formaldehyde lurks in everyday beauty products, and federal regulators are still catching up — hopefully by the end of 2026.

Take a look at the back of your shampoo bottle. Yes, go into the bathroom or wherever you keep your shampoo right now. Do not wait. Okay, now read the list of ingredients on the package, bottle, or whatever it’s in. If you see something called DMDM hydantoin, imidazolidinyl urea, or quaternium-15, you’re looking at a chemical that slowly releases formaldehyde every time it sits on your skin. You won’t see the word “formaldehyde” on the label. It’s hidden behind ingredient names that are hard to pronounce and easy to ignore. But researchers and federal health agencies have known for years that formaldehyde is a confirmed human carcinogen, and it’s still in millions of bottles in American bathrooms right now.

That’s not scare talk. It’s the conclusion of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, and the U.S. National Toxicology Program. Both classify formaldehyde as “known to be a human carcinogen.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency agrees, listing it as carcinogenic by inhalation with evidence pointing to nasopharyngeal cancer, nasal sinus cancer, and a form of blood cancer called myeloid leukemia. Would anyone actually go into a store and say, “Okay, give me that cancer-causing shampoo, please”? But that’s practically what you do if you buy products and you are unaware that hidden in the ingredients are chemicals that will hurt you or cause serious disease.

It’s Not Just in Hair Straighteners

One aside: When I was a child, I lived in a poor neighborhood, and there was only one drugstore within walking distance. The other drugstores were far away, and they didn’t carry the products that the local drug store carried.

What were those products? They were unknown to me because most of them were hair-straightening products I had never seen before. After reading about the dangers of chemicals applied to the scalp, I wonder whether the high rate of breast cancer in Black women might be linked to this. I don’t have proof, but I have questions.

For a long time, most of the public conversation about formaldehyde in beauty products focused on professional-grade hair straighteners and so-called keratin treatments used in salons. Those products heat up formaldehyde and release it as a gas, which workers and clients breathe in directly. But a study published in May 2025 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters made it very clear that the problem is much broader.

Researchers at the Silent Spring Institute recruited 70 women in South Los Angeles, mostly Black and Latina, and asked them to track every personal care product they used for one week. They found that more than half of the women regularly used products containing formaldehyde or formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, including everyday items like lotions, shampoos, body wash, soaps, and even eyelash glue. The most common culprit found in the products was DMDM hydantoin, a preservative added to keep products from going bad on the shelf.

“We found that this isn’t just about hair straighteners,” said lead researcher Dr. Robin Dodson of the Silent Spring Institute. “These chemicals are in products we use all the time, all over our bodies. Repeated exposures like these can add up and cause serious harm.”

What These Chemicals Are Doing to Your Body

Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives work by slowly breaking down and releasing small amounts of formaldehyde over time. That’s actually the point. Formaldehyde is a powerful antimicrobial agent, and it keeps bacteria and mold from growing inside your lotion or shampoo. But what’s good for shelf life isn’t necessarily good for you.

When these chemicals sit on your skin, especially in leave-on products like face creams, moisturizers, and body lotion, they can be absorbed through the skin and into your bloodstream. A 2025 laboratory study using pig ear skin found that formaldehyde released from these preservatives passes through skin tissue and enters the body. The amount absorbed goes up when a product is stored in heat, which means a bottle of lotion left in a hot car or a warm bathroom isn’t the same product you started with. Have you ever heard that you shouldn’t store medicines or certain products in your bathroom’s medicine cabinet? Consider what might happen if you did or do now.

Skin contact with formaldehyde can trigger acute allergic reactions, rashes, and a condition called contact dermatitis. In the U.S., approximately 20% of cosmetics contain a formaldehyde-releasing ingredient, and the rate of allergic reactions to these ingredients is notably higher among Americans than among people in Europe. That gap exists because the European Union banned formaldehyde as a cosmetic ingredient in 2009, with strict warning-label requirements for any product containing formaldehyde-releasing preservatives. Seventeen years ago, the European market rid itself of these dangerous products, and we’re still using them.

The effects don’t stop at the skin. No, it gets worse and goes deeper. Some studies indicate that long-term exposure to formaldehyde may interfere with the nervous system, potentially contributing to headaches, cognitive slowing, and memory problems. Workers in industries with regular formaldehyde exposure, such as funeral home employees and lab pathologists, have shown higher-than-normal rates of chromosome damage in their white blood cells, which is one of the biological markers linked to leukemia risk.

I remember visiting a hospital morgue once. After 45 minutes in that large room, I came out, and hours later, I still smelled like formaldehyde. It had gotten into the fibers of my clothes.

What the FDA Has and Hasn’t Done

Here’s where things get complicated. Before 2022, the FDA had almost no authority to regulate cosmetic ingredients. Companies didn’t have to register their products, prove their safety before selling them, or report adverse events to the agency. Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives were legal, common, and largely invisible to regulators.

In December 2022, Congress passed the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act, known as MoCRA. It was the first major overhaul of cosmetics regulation since 1938. Under MoCRA, cosmetic companies are now required to register their facilities with the FDA, list their products, maintain safety records, and report serious adverse events. That’s real progress. But registration doesn’t mean the FDA reviewed those products for safety before they went on the shelf. See the problem there?

As for formaldehyde specifically: the FDA has been planning to issue a proposed rule to ban or restrict formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing chemicals in hair smoothing products since at least 2021. The agency missed a deadline in April 2024. Then, a revised target of March 2025 passed without action. The current target for a proposed rule was for December 2025, though experts and legal analysts note that this timeline has already slipped multiple times. A final rule, when it comes, would give manufacturers additional time to reformulate before they’re required to comply.

What would they do with all the leftover product? From some experience with corporations, I can tell you that leftover products, along with unsafe toys, are usually sent to third-world countries where people are grateful to receive them, even though they don’t know the dangers.

The FDA has been clear that it views these chemicals as a genuine health risk. It’s stated publicly that they’re linked to short-term effects like breathing problems and skin sensitization, and long-term risks including certain cancers. The agency’s own language supports the science. But the rulemaking process moves slowly, and in the meantime, the products stay on the shelves. As long as they stay on the shelf, people will buy them, believing they are safe and not knowing that they are putting their health at risk.

States Are Moving Faster

With federal action stalled, several states have taken matters into their own hands. California and Maryland were the first to ban formaldehyde and several related chemicals from cosmetics in 2020 and 2021. Oregon and Vermont followed in 2023 and 2024.1

Washington State went the furthest. In August 2025, it became the first state in the country to ban the entire class of formaldehyde-releasing chemicals in cosmetics, covering 25 specific chemicals and any others that release formaldehyde. Restrictions take effect January 1, 2027, with retailers given until the end of 2027 to sell off existing stock. That’s a meaningful deadline, but it also means that products containing these ingredients can legally remain on store shelves in Washington for more than two years. Not only that, but rather than sell the stock, will they make charitable contributions and get a tax reward?

What You Can Do Right Now

You don’t have to wait for federal regulation to protect yourself. Here’s what to look for on labels and avoid if you can:

Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives to watch for: DMDM hydantoin, quaternium-15, imidazolidinyl urea, diazolidinyl urea, sodium hydroxymethylglycinate, bronopol (2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3-diol). Those sure are tongue twisters, aren’t they? Make a list, take it with you, and check every package.

Free apps like EWG’s Skin Deep database let you search products by ingredient and flag those with formaldehyde releasers. Look for labels that say “formaldehyde-free” or that have been certified by organizations like the Environmental Working Group (EWG). And pay extra attention to products you leave on your skin for a long time, like face creams, body lotions, and leave-in conditioners, since those carry higher absorption potential than rinse-off products like shampoo.

The science on formaldehyde isn’t new. The cancer evidence has been building for decades. What’s new is that we now know these chemicals are in far more of our everyday products than most people realized, and they’re reaching people’s bloodstreams whether we notice it or not. That’s worth knowing.