The prohibition

Rinse-off is the trigger

Updated October 2026

On this page9

The paragraph reaches rinse-off cosmetics only So one leaf of nine is inside it Which is a real and slightly odd result Toothpaste is included expressly A wash or cleanser is plainly rinse-off too And a product that is both is the hard case The plastic-free decision is usually the simpler one The asymmetry should decide your marginal cases References

How the customer uses it decides which rule applies, which is unusual even in this library.

The paragraph reaches rinse-off cosmetics only

The prohibited act is manufacturing or introducing into interstate commerce a rinse-off cosmetic containing intentionally-added plastic microbeads. A leave-on product is not within the description.

So one leaf of nine is inside it

Body scrub. The other eight in this group are leave-on: butter, lotion, oil, foot cream, hand cream, massage oil, stretch mark balm and cuticle balm. The paragraph does not reach any of them.

Which is a real and slightly odd result

The identical plastic particle is a prohibited ingredient in a scrub and an ordinary formulation choice in a body butter. The rationale is about where the particle ends up, and that follows the use rather than the formula.

Toothpaste is included expressly

The statute says the term rinse-off cosmetic includes toothpaste. That is a clarification rather than an extension, and it matters for anyone whose range spans body and oral care.

A wash or cleanser is plainly rinse-off too

Even though it is not named. The paragraph defines rinse-off cosmetic by including toothpaste rather than by exhaustive definition, so the ordinary meaning does the work for a body wash.

And a product that is both is the hard case

A scrub marketed as leaving a film, or a cleansing balm wiped rather than rinsed, sits less clearly. The honest approach is to treat anything customers will rinse as rinse-off rather than to argue the margin.

The plastic-free decision is usually the simpler one

Because then the classification question stops mattering, and a plastic-free claim is a genuine selling point in this category. That is the route most of the market has taken.

The asymmetry should decide your marginal cases

Classifying a leave-on product as rinse-off costs you one ingredient option. Classifying a rinse-off product as leave-on is a prohibited act. Where the answer is genuinely unclear, that imbalance settles it.

References

21 U.S.C. 331(ddd), which prohibits the manufacture or the introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of a rinse-off cosmetic containing intentionally-added plastic microbeads, defines a plastic microbead as any solid plastic particle less than five millimeters in size intended to be used to exfoliate or cleanse the human body or any part thereof, and provides that rinse-off cosmetic includes toothpaste. law.cornell.edu

21 CFR 701.3, the cosmetic ingredient declaration, which requires ingredients in descending order of predominance on the label of a cosmetic in package form. law.cornell.edu

Written from federal statute and from measured catalog data, not from a formulation bench. Whether a particular particle is a plastic microbead within 21 U.S.C. 331(ddd) is a question about that particle and its purpose. Nothing here is a determination about a specific exfoliant or a specific formula.