AICIS 2022 - Aluminium in antiperspirants and deodorants

The Australian Industrial Chemicals Introduction Scheme evaluated aluminium salts used in antiperspirants and deodorants as a public human-health risk assessment. The report does not contain new product testing, but it summarizes SCCS concentration and exposure data for deodorant and antiperspirant formulations. This page records the finished-product aluminium context and exposure assumptions without treating the report as a market survey.

Key numbers

• Evaluation identity: Use of Aluminium in Antiperspirants, AICIS evaluation statement EVA00100, dated 22 December 2022.
• Evaluation scope: the assessment covers aluminium salts listed on the Australian Inventory of Industrial Chemicals and focuses on their use in antiperspirants and deodorants; worker risks were previously assessed under NICNAS IMAP.
• SCCS 2014 aluminium chlorohydrate formulation levels: 38% in aerosol formulations, 14.5% in roll-on formulations, and 21% in stick formulations, equivalent to 9.5% Al, 3.6% Al, and 5.2% Al, respectively. A later supporting-information section reports the roll-on equivalent as 3.61% Al.
• Industry survey summary: based on data from a 2016 industry survey, total aluminium concentration in a range of deodorant and antiperspirant products was 3.24-7.7%.
• SCCS 2022 Table 1 aluminium-salt concentrations in cosmetic products (Max conc. %; Mean conc. %): sulfuric acid, aluminium salt (3:2) 6.25; 5.1; aluminium chloride hydroxide (Al2Cl(OH)5) 25.5; 18.5; aluminium chloride, basic 30.9; 21.3; aluminium zirconium chloride hydroxide 10.2; 10.2; aluminium chloride (AlCl3) 12; 11.1; aluminium chloride hexahydrate 12; 11.1; potassium alum dodecahydrate 6.25; 5.1.
• SCCS 2022 Table 2 aluminium concentrations in deodorants and antiperspirants (Max aluminium conc %; Mean aluminium conc %): deo roll on - gel 6.18; 1.7; deo roll on - roll on 5.63; 1.45; deo roll on - stick 7.73; 1.05; deo spray - anti perspirant 3.24; 0.32; deo spray - pump 4.88; 1.17.
• Absorption assumptions: oral bioavailability is estimated at 0.3% via drinking water and 0.1% via food. Dermal bioavailability from a recent study was 0.00052%; with aluminium found in faeces (0.0014%), overall bioavailable aluminium was 0.00192%. The report says 95% of the dose remained on the skin and did not penetrate the body.
• Risk-assessment point of departure: with a NOAEL of 30 mg/kg bw/day from a neurodevelopmental toxicity study in rats, systemic exposure at the NOAEL was calculated as 180 µg Al /kg bw/day.
• Dermal SED values: at 0.00192% dermal bioavailability, SED was 0.0265 µg Al/kg bw/day for non-spray formulations and 0.0204 µg Al/kg bw/day for spray formulations. At 0.00052% dermal bioavailability, SED was 0.007 µg Al/kg bw/day for non-spray formulations and 0.006 µg Al/kg bw/day for spray formulations.
• Inhalation SED values: SCCS 2020 estimates were 0.00781 µg/kg bw/day for respirable particles in deep lung, 0.00234 µg/kg bw/day for respirable particles deposited in the upper respiratory tract, and 0.000432 µg/kg bw/day for non-respirable particles. SCCS 2022 estimated 0.256 µg/kg bw/day for antiperspirant-spray inhalation using conservative assumptions of 3% lung uptake and 100% inhalation of released spray particles.
• Margin-of-safety values copied from the source: dermal MOS at 0.00192% bioavailability was 6792 for non-spray and 8823 for spray formulations; dermal MOS at 0.00052% bioavailability was 25714 for non-spray and 30000 for spray formulations. Inhalation MOS values were 23047, 76923, and 416667 for the SCCS 2020 particle fractions, while the SCCS 2022 conservative spray-inhalation MOS was 703.

Methods (brief)

AICIS conducted a public human-health risk assessment for aluminium salts in antiperspirants and deodorants using prior NICNAS IMAP assessments, SCCS opinions, RIVM/VKM exposure evaluations, and industry-supplied SCCS 2022 concentration data. The report is a regulatory evaluation, not a primary laboratory occurrence study: it does not report product sampling locations, raw sample IDs, analytical instruments, LOD/LOQ values, CRM recoveries, or a new concentration dataset generated by AICIS. Concentration values are retained only as the SCCS/industry formulation context printed in the report.

Speciation: the source evaluates aluminium salts and reports aluminium as Al concentration or aluminium-salt percentage. It does not report arsenic, mercury, chromium species, or any other HMTc analyte species.

Implications

Certification (HMTc): This is A-tier regulatory and exposure-context evidence for the deodorants product category, especially antiperspirants and aluminium-salt formulations. It can support deodorant/antiperspirant routing and aluminium exposure narrative, but downstream pooling should distinguish its secondary SCCS concentration tables from primary product-occurrence surveys.

Courses: The report is useful for teaching the distinction between formulation percentage, finished-product aluminium percentage, dermal/inhalation exposure estimates, and occurrence sampling. It also shows why aluminium salts in deodorants should be kept as aluminium context rather than collapsed into unrelated metal species.

App: The source can support an Australian regulatory-context card for antiperspirant aluminium exposure. It should not be used for brand ranking, HMTc threshold comparison, or claims about products not covered by the source.

Wiki pages this source may touch

• deodorants
• aluminum

Verification notes

• PDF text was extracted with pdftotext -layout to /tmp/mfk_june8_aluminium_antiperspirants_statement.txt. The title block, subject/evaluation-scope pages, summary of use, Tables 1-2, human-exposure section, and risk-characterisation section were checked against this page.
• No DOI is printed in the extracted report. Identity checks before creation found no existing wiki/sources/aicis2022-aluminium-antiperspirants-evaluation.md, no title or EVA00100 source-page hit, and no raw-handle hit for MFK_use-of-aluminium-in-antiperspirants-evaluation-sta.
• Numbers are copied in the source’s own units (%, µg Al/kg bw/day, µg/kg bw/day, mg/kg bw/day) and were not converted. The source’s 3.6% Al versus 3.61% Al roll-on equivalent is preserved as a source-internal precision difference rather than normalized.
• Speciation: this page uses aluminium/Al only. The report does not provide iAs, tAs, MeHg, tHg, Cr(VI), or total Cr occurrence data.
• Brand firewall: the report uses formulation/product categories and an anonymized industry survey; no brand-linked values are reported here.
• Evidence tier: A because this is an official AICIS regulatory evaluation. It is not primary occurrence evidence because AICIS did not generate the concentration data.
• Routing: product slug deodorants and metal slug aluminum appear in the taxonomy snapshot. No closed ingredient slug is appropriate for the aluminium-salt group, so ingredients is left empty rather than inventing a salt-specific slug. npm run evidence:source-routes exited 0, generated one deodorants product route, left the source absent from routing_unresolved.csv, and recorded only the expected nonblocking empty-ingredients advisory in routing_malformed.csv.

Page history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.