Why are there so many bans lately?

If this question has crossed your mind lately, that’s completely understandable. TPO, new ingredients, new regulations, new updates about what you need to watch out for.

It’s easy to feel like something has changed dramatically and that ingredients the industry used for years are suddenly being banned one after another.

But are there really that many more bans?

The situation is much more nuanced than that.

And once you understand what is happening in the background, it immediately feels less like someone is deliberately trying to make life harder for nail professionals.

1. No, they are not targeting nail professionals

Let’s start with the most important point: bans and restrictions on ingredients do not apply exclusively to the nail industry.

Regulation is constantly changing across the cosmetics industry. New research findings emerge, the hazard classifications of certain substances change, and EU cosmetics regulation has to adapt to these changes from time to time.

In other words, there is no conspiracy aimed at systematically taking nail professionals’ materials away from them.

Nail products are part of a much broader, constantly evolving cosmetics regulatory system.

2. At the same time, where we shop from has changed dramatically

There is another important change as well.

Today, with just a few clicks, you can order cosmetics or nail products from practically the other side of the world. What is incredibly convenient as a customer is a much more difficult story from an enforcement perspective.

And this is not just a theoretical problem.

According to the European Commission’s 2025 Safety Gate data, cosmetics were the most frequently notified product category among dangerous products reported in the EU, accounting for 36% of all alerts. In Hungary, the same figure was 51%.

Of course, this does not mean that “cosmetics are dangerous”.

But it clearly shows that this market genuinely requires serious oversight and regulation.

And this is exactly where the origin of the product you work with every day becomes especially important.

3. Just because you can order it does not mean it can legally be placed on the EU market

This is one of the most important distinctions you should know as a nail professional.

“I was able to order it online.”

and

“This product complies with the European Union’s requirements for placing cosmetics on the market.”

These do not mean the same thing.

Cosmetics placed on the EU market must meet several mandatory requirements. One of these is CPNP notification.

The CPNP, or Cosmetic Products Notification Portal, is the European Union’s notification system for cosmetic products. The product’s Responsible Person must submit information about the product to this system before placing it on the market.

It is important to be clear about one thing: CPNP notification does not mean that the European Commission has individually tested and “declared the product safe”.

However, having the notification in place is one of the fundamental requirements for legally placing a cosmetic product on the EU market.

So just because you can order something from a webshop outside the EU without any difficulty, and the parcel arrives at your door, it does not automatically mean that the cosmetic product complies with every EU requirement.

And because of the enormous volume of online orders, in practice complete oversight cannot be left solely to the authorities.

This is where, at a certain point, the decision comes back to you.

What are you buying? Where are you buying it from? And how much do you know about the product you then use on your clients?

The takeaway is not that you should never order anything from outside the EU.

It is that you should know what product you are choosing and be aware of the potential risks that may come with it.

4. Bans existed before. The difference is that now you hear about them.

And this may be the most interesting part of the whole story.

Ingredient bans are not a new phenomenon at all.

EU cosmetics regulation has been amended regularly in the past as well, including to incorporate new classifications of substances classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic to reproduction, known as CMR substances, into cosmetics regulation.

In 2019, for example, a single major regulatory amendment affected a significant number of such substances.

The thing is, most nail professionals probably heard absolutely nothing about it.

There was no video about it. You did not see posts about it. You did not get a newsletter saying that more ingredients had been added to the prohibited list.

And this is exactly what creates the feeling that:

“There weren’t this many bans before.”

If you previously heard zero stories like this in a year, but now come across them regularly, it is completely natural to feel as though their number has suddenly multiplied.

Often, however, the ban itself is not what is new.

What is new is that we are talking about it now.

We launched the Safe Nail Products programme in autumn 2024 partly for this very reason. Our goal was to make sure that information which previously remained buried in legislation, databases and professional documents would finally reach the people it actually affects in an understandable way: you, nail professionals.

5. After TPO, every ban hits harder

Then came TPO.

And it fundamentally changed the way the industry reacts to news of another ingredient ban.

TPO affected products used by many nail professionals. And when the ban took effect on 1 September 2025, it did not only stop sales: from that date, nail professionals could no longer use cosmetics containing TPO on clients, even if the product had been purchased earlier.

Understandably, that left a mark on the industry.

Stocks had to be checked, products had to be replaced, and nail professionals had to adapt quickly to a change that directly affected a great many of them.

Since then, the word “ban” simply hits harder.

When news breaks about another ingredient, it is easy to immediately think:

“Oh no. Here we go again.”

But a new ban does not automatically mean that another TPO situation is coming.

The ingredient may not be present in a single product you use. It may affect only a few products. And its impact on the nail industry may be nowhere near comparable to that of TPO.

That is why it is important not to react to the word “ban” alone, but to always look at what the change actually involves.

So are there really far more bans now?

Bans are not a new phenomenon. They existed before, they exist now, and in all likelihood they will continue to exist in the future.

What has genuinely changed is that much more information about them now reaches you.

At the same time, online imports from outside the EU have grown enormously, more attention is being paid to filtering out dangerous or non-compliant products, and TPO has made the entire industry more sensitive to every new piece of news about a ban.

That makes it easier to understand why it can feel as though something is suddenly being banned every other week.

The goal is not to stop talking about these things. Quite the opposite.

Let’s talk about them, but with context instead of panic.

Because when a new story appears, you really only need answers to a few simple questions:

Does it affect me? Does it affect any of my products? When does the regulation change? And do I actually need to do anything?

Once you have those answers, another “ban” already looks very different.

You do not have to blindly trust anything or anyone.

If you have a nail product and would like to know whether it has been notified in the CPNP system, we are still here to help.

Through the Safe Nail Products programme, you can send us the details of any product, regardless of brand, and we will check the existence of its CPNP notification for you.

Go to webshop.mysticnails.hu, find the Safe Nail Products menu item and fill in the short form there.

Because when it comes to this topic, the goal is not for you to be afraid of what you work with.

It is for you to know what you work with.