Avon's bankruptcy, L'Oreal's lawsuit, and the 'forever chemicals' found in most American makeup

Avon didn't go bankrupt because people stopped buying makeup. In August 2024, Avon Products filed for Chapter 11 with more than 380 pending lawsuits alleging its talc-based cosmetics caused cancer — one Chicago jury had already awarded a plaintiff $24.4 million weeks earlier. Avon isn't the only major beauty company facing this kind of exposure right now, and a separate, unrelated body of lab testing keeps finding something else in the same makeup bags: PFAS, the "forever chemicals" that don't break down in the environment, and don't seem to break down particularly well in a lab test either.

Avon's bankruptcy, in the actual numbers

Avon Products filed for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware on August 12-13, 2024, citing more than 380 pending lawsuits alleging that its talc-based products, including its cosmetic talc, caused cancer and mesothelioma. The filing came about three weeks after a Chicago jury awarded a single plaintiff $24.4 million in a talc case. Avon's total funded debt was roughly $1.3 billion, and the company has called the underlying claims "without merit," while also saying its insurance coverage for "legacy talc liabilities" is limited — the specific financial pressure that pushed it into bankruptcy court rather than trial after trial.

Estée Lauder, MAC and Clinique's own settlement

Talc litigation isn't unique to Avon. The Estée Lauder Companies — which owns MAC, Clinique, Origins and its own namesake line — recorded a $159 million charge in fiscal 2025 to cover settlement agreements reached with plaintiffs' law firms between August and October 2024, resolving pending cosmetic-talc lawsuits and setting up a capped process for handling new claims filed between 2025 and 2029. Separately, in October 2021 the Center for Environmental Health filed a Prop 65 notice naming an Estée Lauder bronzer, a Clinique foundation, a MAC concealer and an Origins foundation over PFOA, a PFAS compound, found in the products.

L'Oréal's mascara lawsuit

L'Oréal USA is separately facing two federal class actions, Hicks v. L'Oréal USA and Vargas v. L'Oréal USA, filed in March 2022 in the Southern District of New York. Both allege L'Oréal marketed waterproof mascaras as safe while they contained undisclosed PFAS. These are consumer-fraud claims about disclosure, not a court finding that the products are unsafe — the same distinction that mattered in the Kashi "all natural" cereal lawsuit.

What an independent lab actually found in the makeup itself

Separate from any lawsuit, a 2021 University of Notre Dame study — Whitehead et al., published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters — tested 231 cosmetics products sold in the US and Canada for fluorine, a marker for PFAS, using a technique called particle-induced gamma-ray emission spectroscopy. It found high fluorine levels in 56% of foundations and eye products, 48% of lip products, and 47% of mascaras overall, and press coverage of the same dataset reported the number climbed to 82% specifically among waterproof mascaras. The study's own authors noted PFAS was rarely listed on the label of the products that tested positive.

Why none of this requires the FDA to have approved anything

Here's the part that surprises most people: the FDA does not require premarket safety approval for cosmetic products or ingredients before they go on sale, with the narrow exception of color additives. The Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022 added facility registration, ingredient listing, mandatory safety-substantiation records, and adverse-event reporting — real new requirements — but it did not create a premarket approval system. A cosmetics company can put a product on shelves first and find out about a problem later, through a lawsuit or an independent university lab, rather than an FDA review.

How to actually read this

1. A lawsuit and a lab result are two different kinds of evidence. Avon's bankruptcy and L'Oréal's class action are about what companies allegedly knew and disclosed. The Notre Dame study is an independent measurement of what's actually in the product, regardless of what anyone said about it.
2. "Waterproof" is a real risk signal, not just a marketing word. PFAS chemistry is often what makes a formula water- and sweat-resistant, which lines up with why the Notre Dame study found it concentrated hardest in waterproof mascara.
3. No FDA warning doesn't mean the FDA checked. Premarket approval isn't part of how US cosmetics regulation works, color additives aside — so "no recall yet" is not the same claim as "reviewed and cleared."

Check what's actually in your makeup and skincare on the Tallow app before you decide what "clean beauty" means to you.

Figures and facts in this post are sourced from court filings, company earnings disclosures, the cited peer-reviewed study and reporting linked above, current as of the time of writing. This is not medical or legal advice.