CAEnglish and FrenchOfficial records available

Canada cosmetic ingredient regulations

The Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist records administrative prohibitions and restrictions.

Regulator: Health Canada
Source language: English and French
Coverage version: Health Canada Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist, 13 August 2025

What this list is

Health Canada's Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist is an administrative list, not a regulation. It names substances Health Canada considers may not comply with the Food and Drugs Act — which is a different kind of statement from an EU annex entry.

580 Canadian records: 490 prohibited, 90 restricted.
The Hotlist is administrative guidance; the binding instrument is the Food and Drugs Act and the Cosmetic Regulations.
It is published in English and French, and both versions are official.
The Hotlist is shorter than the EU annexes by design — it is not an attempt at the same coverage.

The Hotlist reads like a prohibited-substance annex and works differently. Health Canada publishes it as administrative guidance: it names substances that the department considers may contravene the general prohibition in the Food and Drugs Act, or the Cosmetic Regulations made under it. The legal force sits in those instruments, not in the list, and the list can be updated without the process an annex amendment would need.

For anyone comparing markets, that difference matters more than it first appears. An EU Annex II entry is a legal prohibition with a number and a date. A Hotlist entry is Health Canada saying, in advance, how it reads the Act. The practical effect on a product is usually the same, but the reasoning a regulator will accept — and the evidence that can rebut it — is not.

The list is also much shorter than its EU counterpart: 580 records against several thousand. That is not a gap waiting to be filled. Canada regulates cosmetics through a general safety duty plus this list, rather than through an exhaustive catalogue, so a substance being absent from the Hotlist says nothing about whether it is acceptable in a Canadian product.

Both the English and French versions are official. Where a substance is named differently between them, neither wording is a translation of the other for legal purposes.

Checked against

Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist (Health Canada)

Official ingredient records

490 matching records

ProhibitedOfficial guidanceOriginal is EnglishOfficial-source import checked

Acetonitrile

Canada Hotlist: Acetonitrile

CAS 75-05-8

Health Canada lists this ingredient as prohibited for use in cosmetic products.

Source:Hotlist prohibited entry 51 · version Health Canada Hotlist 2025-08-13 · source checked 2026-08-30

What this list is

Checked against

Official ingredient records

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How Canada differs from other markets

Official sources and legal role

What this market page can answer

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