UK: Holland & Barrett to ban products with parabens and SLS

Holland and Barrett, the UK's leading retailer of vitamins, minerals and herbal supplements, will remove any product that contains parabens or sodium lauryl sulphate from its 525 stores. Holland & Barrett's trading chief, Phil Geary, said that they had been working over the past year behind the scenes with suppliers to eliminate the use of these chemicals. As a result they had decided to reject certain well-known brands from their stores and reformulate all their own label products.

The Soil Association has banned parabens and SLS from beauty products carrying its name, and other organic beauty brands have taken a similar step, Daily Mail reports. Professor Vivian Howard, a pathologist and toxicologist from Ulster University, welcomed the store's move as a precautionary stance. It was good that they were offering the public cosmetics without these chemicals, since particularly parabens had come under a number of questions about their toxicology.

Daily Mail