By 30 November, brands selling nail polish with TPhP above 250 ppm in California must notify the state: Brussels only proposes to ban the same chemical in cosmetics from 2028

What California requires, and by when

DTSC's final listing covers nail coatings and nail or cuticle treatments containing TPhP above 250 ppm, whether the chemical was added on purpose or is present as a contaminant. California's Office of Administrative Law approved the rule and published it in the California Notice Register on 12 June 2026, with an effective date of 1 October 2026. The state's regulatory reference for the rulemaking is R-2025-03R. Being listed as a Priority Product does not, by itself, prohibit a brand from selling it in California. What the listing triggers is a notification duty: the responsible entity, normally the manufacturer, must submit a Priority Product Notification to DTSC within 60 days of the effective date, which is 30 November 2026.

After notification, DTSC's framework gives the responsible entity a choice, not a sentence: conduct a formal Alternatives Analysis, reformulate to remove TPhP, substitute another ingredient, or stop selling the product in California. DTSC itself says the listing does not introduce an immediate ban and does not automatically compel further regulatory action.

A screening deadline this month, a proposed ban in Brussels for 2028

Most coverage of this listing frames it as a California nail-salon safety story, which understates what is actually happening. TPhP is the same organophosphate the European Union's own Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety spent years reviewing: after an earlier opinion said it could not rule out genotoxicity, the SCCS adopted a final opinion on 25 July 2024. On the back of that opinion, a European Commission draft regulation would add TPhP, under CAS number 115-86-6, to Annex II of the EU Cosmetics Regulation, the list of substances banned outright in cosmetic products sold in the EU, with a proposed compliance deadline of 1 July 2028. That draft had not been adopted as of this writing, and the substance does not yet appear in the EU's consolidated list of banned cosmetic ingredients.

California took the opposite route on timing. Rather than waiting to ban the ingredient outright, DTSC set a concentration threshold, 250 ppm, and a short notification window, and built the compliance mechanism around disclosure first. The practical result: a brand's nail polish formula can be perfectly lawful in the EU today, simply because Brussels has not finished banning the ingredient yet, and still trigger a reporting duty in California by 30 November. The two timelines run in opposite directions, and a brand that benchmarks its global chemical compliance against the EU list risks assuming it is covered in the US market when it is not.

Why it matters for brands

DTSC's own 2020 ingredient-disclosure screening found TPhP in 1,154 nail products on the market, and the agency cites developmental, liver, thyroid and suspected endocrine effects as the basis for the listing. That volume of affected SKUs matters because the notification duty does not stop with the manufacturer. California's Safer Consumer Products program applies the duty to a responsible entity in a specific order: the manufacturer first, then, if the manufacturer does not comply, the importer, then the retailer. A brand that private-labels nail polish from an overseas contract manufacturer, or a retailer selling a marketplace SKU with no responsive manufacturer on record, can inherit the filing duty by default. The brands most exposed are the ones that hold allergen and safety dossiers built for the EU and have never needed a per-SKU concentration figure for TPhP, because the EU has not required one. Knowing which SKUs cross 250 ppm, and being able to prove it to a supplier or a regulator, is a product master-data question, not a reformulation question, and it has to be answered before the manufacturer, importer or retailer in the chain finds out the hard way which of them is now the responsible entity.

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