Abstract
The Pharmaceutical Affairs Law provides a definition for drugs, quasi-drugs and cosmetics and introduces a list of chemical ingredients that can be compounded for this category of products. In this paper, not only is a safety assessment performed to look at the chemical ingredients by various kinds of biological assay, but a safety control is also conducted for drugs, quasi-drugs and cosmetics through an accelerated public reporting system on cases where health has been damaged from commercially available products. In addition, collaborative activities have been undertaken by academic societies, governmental organizations and associations of manufacturers, and widely supported by a multi-field group of experts that includes doctors, chemists, biologists and manufacturers in order to establish preventive measures against health damages caused by the drugs, quasi-drugs and cosmetics category of products. The group has conducted research on epidemic health cases, following elucidation on the mechanism by which the health damages occurred and specification of the causative chemicals involved.
